1. Introduction: interpreting the violent state Austin Sarat and Jennifer Culbert Part I. On the Forms of State Killing: 2. The innocuousness of state lethality in an age of national security Robin Wagner-Pacifici 3. Oedipal sovereignty Jeremy Arnold 4. Consecrating violence Mateo Taussig-Rubbo 5. Due process and lethal confinement Colin Dayan 6. From time to torture: the hellish future of the criminal sentence Thomas L. Dumm 7. The child in the broom closet: states of killing and letting die Elizabeth Povinelli 8. Canadian state lethality towards indigenous peoples Mark Antaki and Coel Kirkby Part II. Investigating the Discourses of Death: 9. Death in the first person Peter Brooks 10. Open secrets or, the postscript of capital punishment Ravit Reichman 11. Ethical exception: capital punishment in the figure of sovereignty Adam Thurschwell 12. No mercy Adam Sitze.