Hugo Bedau, a philosopher who preferred to wrestle with the knottiest of public policy issues rather than reason from the remove of academia — most notably in confronting capital punishment, which he opposed as immoral, unjust and ineffective — died on Monday in Norwood, Mass. He was 85.
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[h=6]Tufts University[/h]Hugo Bedau spent most of his career at Tufts University.
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The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Constance E. Putnam. Professor Bedau’s half-century career encompassed several cycles in the national debate over the death penalty: its decline and eventual rejection by the Supreme Court in 1972, its resurrection by the court later that decade, and its suspension in several states more recently. His most ambitious work, “The Death Penalty in America,” revised several times, has been a standard text since it was first published in 1964.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/u...her-who-opposed-death-penalty-dies-at-85.html
Enlarge This Image
[h=6]Tufts University[/h]Hugo Bedau spent most of his career at Tufts University.
[h=4]Connect With Us on Twitter[/h]Follow @NYTNational for breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
The cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease, said his wife, Constance E. Putnam. Professor Bedau’s half-century career encompassed several cycles in the national debate over the death penalty: its decline and eventual rejection by the Supreme Court in 1972, its resurrection by the court later that decade, and its suspension in several states more recently. His most ambitious work, “The Death Penalty in America,” revised several times, has been a standard text since it was first published in 1964.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/17/u...her-who-opposed-death-penalty-dies-at-85.html