Expecting an end to the death penalty: ‘Hyper-Rationality’

Matthew Goldberg, President of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, presents an imaginative rearticulation of the global vision for abolition. This lecture is organised around the concept of ‘hyper-rationality’ , counteracting the proposition that expectations for international consensus on this issue should be scaled down in the current political climate. Matthew intends for a philosophy of urgency to emerge from these lectures that may be translated into major legal reform.

With introductory remarks by Professor Kate O’Regan, this is the second of a three-part series, billed as a response to ‘political realities’ that have delayed the total eradication of the death penalty. In September, at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Matthew delivered the opening lecture of the series on the question of naivety, and the call for global abolition. The University of Oxford’s Death Penalty Research Unit, in conjunction with the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, is hosting this series in France, the UK, and the US. Notably coinciding with the UN General Assembly’s 2024 resolution calling for an international moratorium on the death penalty, these lectures are intended to promote an open dialogue, they are accessible to the general public, and will be available online.

Matthew Goldberg

Matthew Goldberg is President of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty, the peak body for anti-death penalty advocacy worldwide. He was re-elected to this role in 2023, having first been elected during the World Coalition’s General Assembly in 2021. Matthew often represents the World Coalition in the human rights forums of the United Nations, and has also appeared before regional bodies including the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers, and the EU’s Working Party on Human Rights. He is a DPhil candidate at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Criminology where his research concerns the transparency, legitimacy, and efficacy of UN resolutions on the death penalty. He draws upon experience as a criminal barrister, Australian civil society representative to the UN Human Rights Council, lecturer in criminal law at King’s College London, and senior fellow of Monash Law School’s Eleos Justice. A past president of Reprieve Australia (now the Capital Punishment Justice Project), Matthew remains a member of CPJP’s Executive Board.