It's IntLawGrrls' distinct pleasure today to welcome Dr. Deborah W. Denno (left) as a guest blogger.The Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law, Debby is a foremost expert on the law of capital punishment, an issue of global consequence that's often the subject of IntLawGrrls posts. For nearly 2 decades she has written on, and testified as an expert in state and federal courts about, the constitutionality of lethal injection and electrocution. This expertise is evident from a glance at her publications list, on which also may be found many studies of other issues relating to criminal law, criminal procedure, and social sciences and the law. Currently Debby is working on a book-length project analyzing the neuroscientific correlates of criminal intent and conduct; she already has published Biology and Violence: From Birth to Adulthood (1990). She was a member of the Drugs/Violence Task Force of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, and in 2007 was selected by The National Law Journal as one of the “50 Most Influential Women Lawyers in America.”
Debby holds a B.A. from the University of Virginia, an M.A. from the University of Toronto, and a Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the Managing Editor of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. She clerked for Anthony J. Scirica, now Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and also practiced at a law firm before entering academia. She has held visitorships at Columbia, Vanderbilt, Princeton, the University of London, and the London School of Economics.
In her guest post below, Debby recounts the story of a condemned teenager twice electrocuted by the State of Louisiana, and relates that mid-20th century case to the U.S. Supreme Court's 2008 judgment in Baze v. Rees, a case involving execution by lethal injection, in which she gave expert testimony.
The guest post is dedicated to a woman oft-noted on this blog, Susan B. Anthony (below right), about whom Debby says:
Anthony overcame early economic adversity and extraordinary sexism to propel women's suffrage into the United States by way of her intellect, activism, writing, and steel-strong courage.
Today Anthony joins the list of IntLawGrrls' transnational foremothers just below the "visiting from" map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!
