resume

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear four inmates’ challenge to the specifics of the lethal injection process, federal executions are expected to resume next week. In July 2019, Attorney General William Barr declared an end to a federal moratorium on executions that had been in effect since 2003. The inmates alleged that the Justice Department’s execution instructions, which call for the use of a single dose of pentobarbital, a barbiturate that is normally used as a sedative, violates the Federal Death Penalty Act. They claimed that the law requires federal executions to be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the state” in which the prisoner was convicted. Pentobarbital is not used in Arkansas, Iowa or Missouri, the pertinent states in their cases. They were hoping th...

By early July, about 80% of U.S. campuses were planning to resume at least some in-person instruction, even as a growing numbers of faculty are voicing concerns about safety. As Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, argues, “Because we do not yet have the ability to bring students and staff back to campus while keeping them safe and healthy, we simply cannot return to business as usual.” Sorrell says that bringing students back in this context “constitutes an abdication of our moral responsibility as leaders.” But this isn’t just about the responsibilities of individual campuses and university leaders to do what’s right. As a scholar of ethics, I believe it is unwise and unethical for government to leave schools largely on their own to navigate in deciding whether and how to ...

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Federal executions to resume, posing a new test for lethal injection

Ethical challenges loom over decisions to resume in-person college classes