Essay:
Paul J. Heald, Medea and the Un-Man: Literary Guidance in the Determination of Heinousness under Maynard v. Cartwright, 73 TEXAS L. REV. 571 (1995).
 

Abstract:
Professor Heald brings Dante's Inferno, Lewis's Perelandra, and Euripides's Medea to bear on a discrete problem examined by the U.S. Supreme Court in Maynard v. Cartwright. These literary classics provide guidance in responding to the Court's mandate that the state channel discretion in capital sentencing. These works imply an ethical framework for determining what constitutes an "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" murder. While other literary texts are also relevant to Maynard, the essay only attempts to demonstrate and defend a method of applying literary texts to concrete legal problems. The author utilizes the approach of Martha Nussbaum in Love’s Knowledge to justify the integration of law and literature and briefly contrasts her approach to that of other commentators.