The Case Against the Death Penalty - Hugo Adam Bedau
CLAIM: the death penalty is wrong
DATA: executions cost more than life in prison, does not make crime rates decrease, violates international human rights laws
WARRANT: innocent people may be wrongly accused, against some religions, killing is wrong, not practiced in many sophisticated societies, promotes killing as an OK solution to difficult problems, death sentences are not handled in a fair manner
GROUNDS: many death-row inmates do not have proper lawyers, inmates may be found innocent after death
BACKING: same as above (certain statistics provided on website, as well as factual information to back up the grounds and warrant)
QUALIFIER: none given
CONDITIONS OF REBUTTAL: factual information, statistics, and court cases are all referred to, giving the argument a stronger background against rebuttal; different cases are given where people who had extreme mental illnesses or were already dying received the death penalty, as opposed to other cases where people openly admitted to killing many people and still only received life in prison; this page lists all the reasons why people should be against the death penalty
http://www.antideathpenalty.org/reasons.html
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In any given essay, there will be many claims and many pieces of data broght in to support these claims (and therefore, may warrants upon which the connections between these claims and data are built). You should feel free to single out one of these claims and pieces of data in order to perform a Toulmin analysis.
ReplyDeleteYour section on conditions of rebuttal gives a good list of the info that the author brings in to avoid rebuttal, although the "conditions of rebuttal" as Toulmin defines them are those things the author is trying to avoid having used againt him.
The information you pulled out of the article is good, and I can see that you understand the various parts of the argument as Toulmin enviison them. But the Toulmin system is really good for seeing the relationship betwen specific claims, data, and warrants.