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On the Economics of Capital Punishment

"I support the use of capital punishment for persons convicted of murder because, and only because, I believe it deters murders." By Gary S. Becker .

The crucial issue in the acrimonious debate over capital punishment is deterrence. I support the use of capital punishment for persons convicted of murder because, and only because, I believe it deters murders. If I did not believe that, I would be opposed because revenge should not be a basis for public policy.

The available data on deterrence are quite limited, so one should not base any conclusions solely on the econometric evidence. Still, I believe the preponderance of evidence does indicate that capital punishment deters.

Of course, public policy on punishments cannot wait until the evidence is perfect. Even with the limited quantitative evidence available, there are good reasons to believe that capital punishment deters murders. Most people, and murderers in particular, fear death, especially when it follows swiftly and with considerable certainty following the commission of a murder. David Hume said in discussing suicide that “no man ever threw away life, while it was worth living. For such is our natural horror of death.” Schopenhauer added also in discussing suicide that “as soon as the terrors of life reach a point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life. But the terrors of death offer considerable resistance.” The deterrent effect of capital punishment would be greater if the delays on its implementation were much shortened, and if this punishment was more certain to be used in the appropriate cases. But capital punishment has an important deterrent effect even with the way the present system actually operates.

TRADING OFF LIVES IS INEVITABLE

Opponents of capital punishment frequently proclaim that the state has no moral right to take the life of anyone, including that of a most reprehensible murderer, even if we assume that the deterrent effect on murders is “sizable.” Yet that is absolutely the wrong conclusion for anyone who believes that capital punishment deters. To show why, suppose that for each murderer executed (instead of say receiving life imprisonment), the number of murders is reduced by three, which is a much lower number than some estimates of the deterrent effect. This implies that for each murderer not given capital punishment, three generally innocent victims would die. This argument means that the government would indirectly be “taking” many lives if it did not use capital punishment. The lives so taken are usually much more worthwhile than those of the murderers who would be spared execution. For this reason, the state has a “moral” obligation to use capital punishment if such punishment significantly reduces the number of murders and saves lives of innocent victims. Saving three other lives for every person executed seems like a very attractive trade-off. Even two lives saved per execution seems like a persuasive benefit-cost ratio for capital punishment. But let us go further and suppose that only one life was saved for each murderer executed. Wouldn’t the trade-off still be desirable if the life saved is much better than the life taken, which would usually be the case? As the deterrent effect of capital punishment is made smaller, at some point even I would shift to the anti–capital punishment camp. Admittedly, the argument gets less clear-cut as the number of lives saved per execution falls from two to lower values, say, for example, to one life saved per execution.

Many people object to this comparison of the qualities of the life saved and the life taken. Yet I do not see how to avoid making such a comparison. Consider a person with a long criminal record who holds up and kills a victim who led a decent life and left several children and a spouse behind. Suppose it would be possible to save the life of an innocent victim by executing such a criminal. To me it is obvious that saving the life of such a victim has to count for more than taking the life of such a criminal. To be sure, not all cases are so clear-cut, but I am just trying to establish the principle that a comparison of the qualities of individual lives has to be part of any reasonable social policy.

WHY CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS NOT APPROPRIATE FOR LESSER CRIMES

The above argument helps explain why capital punishment should only be used for some murders and not for theft, robbery, and other lesser crimes. For then the trade-off is between taking lives and reducing property theft, and the case in favor of milder punishments is strong. However, severe assaults, including some gruesome rapes, may approach in severity some murders and might conceivably at times call for capital punishment, although I do not support its use in these cases.

A powerful argument for reserving capital punishment for murders is related to what is called marginal deterrence in the crime-and-punishment literature. If perpetrators of assaults were punished with execution, an assaulter would have an incentive to kill the victim in order to reduce the likelihood that he would be discovered. That is a major reason more generally why the severity of punishments should be matched to the severity of crimes. One complication is that capital punishment may make a murderer fight harder to avoid being captured, which could lead to more deaths. That argument has to be weighed in judging the case for capital punishment. Although marginal deterrence is important, I believe the resistance of murderers to being captured, possibly at the expense of their own lives, is really indirect evidence that criminals do fear capital punishment.

THE PROBLEM OF EXECUTING THE INNOCENT

Of course I am worried about the risk of executing innocent persons for murders committed by others. In any policy toward crime, including capital punishment, one has to compare errors of wrongful conviction with errors of failing to convict guilty persons. My support for capital punishment would weaken greatly if the rate of killing innocent persons were as large as that claimed by many. However, I believe that the appeal process offers enormous protection not so much against wrongful conviction as against wrongful execution, so that there are very few, if any, documented cases of wrongful execution. And this process has been strengthened enormously with the development of DNA identification. However, lengthy appeals delay the execution of guilty murderers, which can only lower the deterrent effect of capital punishment.

THE MORALITY OF DETERRENCE

European governments are adamantly opposed to capital punishment, and some Europeans consider use of this punishment in the United States to be barbaric. But Europeans have generally been “soft” on most crimes during the past half-century. For a long time they could be smug because their crime rates were well below U.S. rates. But during the past 20 years European crime has increased sharply while U.S. rates have fallen—in part because U.S. apprehension and conviction rates have increased considerably. Now some European countries have higher per capita property crime rates than the United States does, although violent crimes are still more common in the United States. At the same time that the United States was reducing crime significantly in part by greater use of punishments, many European intellectuals continued to argue that not just capital punishment, but punishments in general, do not deter.

To repeat, the capital punishment debate comes down in essentials to a debate over deterrence. I can understand that some people are skeptical about the evidence, although I believe they are wrong both on the evidence and on the common sense of the issue. It is very disturbing to take some-one’s life, even a murderer’s life, but sometimes highly unpleasant actions are necessary to deter even worse behavior that takes the lives of innocent victims.

An earlier version of this essay appeared in the online journal The Economists’ Voice 3, no. 3, March 2006 (www.bepress.com). Available from the Hoover Press is The Essence of Becker , edited by Ramon Febrero and Pedro Schwartz. To order, call 800.935.2882 or visit www.hooverpress.org.

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Encyclopedia of Contemporary Constitutionalism pp 1–13 Cite as

Constitutional Prohibitions of Capital Punishment: For and Against

• Cristián Rettig 3  
• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 28 October 2021

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Many constitutions in force incorporate explicit prohibitions of capital punishment. Are there good reasons based on moral rights to support these prohibitions? The aim of this article is not to settle the matter but to discuss two opposing arguments. On the one hand, the first argument gives support to these constitutional prohibitions on the basis of the right to life, as well as the rejection of consequentialist and deontological considerations to override its correlative duty. On the other hand, the second argument claims that the right to life simply cannot protect individuals who commit murder from capital punishment. The reason is that people who commit murder – the most common cause of capital punishment in western countries – simply lose their right to life. The reader is invited to reflect seriously upon which argument (if any) she supports on the basis of her own convictions.

• Capital punishment
• Constitutional prohibitions
• Moral rights
• Abolition of the death penalty

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Rettig, C. (2021). Constitutional Prohibitions of Capital Punishment: For and Against. In: Cremades, J., Hermida, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Contemporary Constitutionalism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31739-7_147-1

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27 Capital Punishment

Hugo Adam Bedau (Ph.D., Harvard), has taught at Tufts University since 1966. He is the co-author of Current Issues and Enduring Questions (4th edn., 1996), of Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing (2nd edn., 1996), and In Spite of Innocence(1992); and the author of Death is Different (1987), The Death Penalty in America(4th edn., 1997), and is a contributor to many other volumes. His Romanell-Phi Beta Kappa lectures delivered at Tufts in the spring of 1995 (1997), were published by Oxford University Press under the title Making Moral Choices (1997).

• Published: 02 September 2009
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Understanding and justifying capital punishment need to proceed from within a larger framework that can be and often is left implicit. That framework consists of one's views about punishment generally; only within that context can one adequately face the narrower issues peculiar to understanding and justifying the death penalty. If punishment as such could not be justified, then a fortiori neither could the death penalty. If punishment generally serves certain purposes or functions, then presumably so does the death penalty. Not so conversely, however. The death penalty might not be justified, but that need not put in doubt the justification of punishment in general. The discussion in this article proceeds on two assumptions. First, the general features defining punishment within a legal system will be taken for granted. Secondly, the function and purposes of the death penalty will be assumed to be those shared by punishments generally.

1. Introduction

Understanding and justifying capital punishment need to proceed from within a larger framework that can be and often is left implicit. That framework consists of one's views about punishment generally; only within that context can one adequately face the narrower issues peculiar to understanding and justifying the death penalty. If punishment as such could not be justified, then a fortiori neither could the death penalty. If punishment generally serves certain purposes or functions, then presum- ably so does the death penalty. Not so conversely, however. The death penalty might not be justified, but that need not put in doubt the justification of punishment in general (Bedau 1991). In the remarks below, the discussion will proceed on two assumptions. First, the general features defining punishment within a legal system will be taken for granted (Hart 1968 ; Feinberg 1970 ). Secondly, the function and purposes of the death penalty will be assumed to be those shared by punishments generally.

2. Punishment as the Prevention of Crime

A system of punishment is often thought to be justified on the ground that it provides protection for law-abiding persons by helping to prevent crime, and that it does this either by incapacitation or by deterrence (or both). So, too, with the death penalty. Utilitarians and other consequentialists generally support the practice of punishment on one or both of these preventive grounds (Bentham 1830 /1838), and the debate over the death penalty has often been focused on whether this form of punishment is especially effective in either of these two ways.

The issue, of course, is an empirical one. Few students of the actual practice of punishment would dispute the claim that some punishments sometimes prevent some persons from committing some crimes (Gibbs 1975 ). But that generalization is so vague that it sheds no light whatever on the interesting question: is the death penalty a more effective preventive than alternative punishments (typically consisting of what are believed to be less severe punishments, such as long-term imprisonment, and especially life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP))? What is disputed, in other words, are issues of marginal prevention , and especially whether the evidence offered by sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, and other social scientists settles the dispute one way or the other.

3. Deterrence

Most modern research on the marginal deterrent effect of the death penalty has been conducted in the USA and falls into two distinct periods. The earlier research (from 1919 to the early 1970s) compared homicide rates in abolition versus death-penalty jurisdictions, in a given jurisdiction before and after an execution, and in a given juris- diction before and after abolition or re-enactment of the death penalty. No change in homicide rates owing to the death penalty was detected in any of this research. The more recent period (1973–97) was inaugurated by investigations purporting to show that each execution during the middle decades of this century'resulted, on average, in 7 or 8 fewer murders’ (Ehrlich 1975 : 414). Subsequent reinvestigation and further study, however, have more than cast doubt on the adequacy of those findings (Bailey and Peterson 1997 ). Various special features of the methodology (multiple regression analysis) employed were widely criticized, as were the adequacy of the aggregate national data on which the methodology relied. The most recent attempt to establish that lawful executions result in a reduction in murder (Layson 1985 ) has been shown to suffer from much the same defects as the earlier research in this vein (Fox and Radelet 1989 ). The ideal research project to settle the question whether executions cause a decline in criminal homicides (and a greater decline than with LWOP) has yet to be defined and in any case probably would be impossible to carry out. Meanwhile, professional criminologists are in virtually complete agreement that there is no convincing empirical evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent marginally superior to long-term imprisonment (Radelet and Akers 1996).

Running head-on into collision with research purporting to show a deterrent effect is other research purporting to show that executions have a ‘brutalization’ effect. This provocative claim (perhaps first proposed in a newspaper article by Karl Marx in 1853 (see Marx 1853 /1959)) has been supported both by statistical evidence (Bowers 1988 ; Bowers and Pierce 1980 ) and by clinical interviews with persons who committed murder because, they said, they were afraid to commit suicide and wanted the state to execute them (Diamond 1975 ; Solomon 1975 ; West 1975 ).

The moral question raised by considerations of deterrence (marginal or other- wise) is whether the threat of punishment and carrying out that threat (provided certain specified conditions are satisfied) are justified. (This is not a problem unique to the death penalty.) From a Kantian point of view, the objection is obvious: attempting to lower the crime rate by deterrence or incapacitation flagrantly violates the categorical imperative, because it uses a person (in this case, the convicted murderer) solely as a means to the ends of others (greater public safety through incapacitation or deterrence). The Kantian defender of the death penalty can reply that, although only retributive considerations justify any punishment, if there are also superior crime reduction effects thanks to the death penalty, those effects are a legitimate bonus and are not part of the intention in choosing to punish murder with death rather than with some lesser penalty.

4. Incapacitation and Recidivism

So far as the issue of incapacitation is concerned, the death penalty obviously has no rival. Not only do dead men tell no tales; dead men commit no crimes. Punishment of any other sort still permits the offender to cause harm, even if such harm is only slight, remote, and infrequent. There are, however, both empirical and moral questions raised by the practice of incapacitative punishments. First, there is no guarantee that using incapacitation as a punishment prevents any crime(s). To close the gap between incapacitation and prevention, we need to know what crimes would have been committed by the offender had he or she not been incapacitated. Little research on this counterfactual condition relevant to the death-penalty controversy has been carried out. The best such research (Marquart and Sorenson 1989 ) was carried out in the USA. It shows that, as of 1987, out of some 453 murderers on death row in 1972 but not executed because of constitutional infirmities in their sentences, 209 had committed ‘aggravated assaults’ either in the general prison population or while on parole. In addition to these felonies, the former death-row prisoners also committed half a dozen criminal homicides. The remaining ex-death-row murderers (244) either committed no crimes, or their recidivism went undetected, or their crimes were ‘against institutional order’ (escape, riot, strike).

A somewhat different picture emerges from US government statistics, which report that roughly one in eleven of those currently under sentence of death for murder had a prior conviction of criminal homicide (US Bureau of Justice Statistics 2001). Given such data, it is reasonable to conclude that had that tenth (roughly 370) of the current death-row prisoners (3,700 in 2000) been executed after their first conviction of criminal homicide, several hundred innocents would never have been killed (at least, not by those recidivists). But there is no way to identify in advance which convicted killers will recidivate; predictions of future violence are plagued with false positives (Monahan 1978 ). Whether any of these recidivist killers had been sentenced to LWOP is not reported (if they had been, their victims must have been other inmates or prison staff or visitors). So long as LWOP is an available sentence for first-degree murder, incapacitation by the death penalty is not necessary to prevent recidivist murder by the vast majority of these offenders. As for the policy options, they reduce to three: (1) return to a mandatory death penalty, in order to execute all convicted murderers (and other capital felons, if any), or (2) execute none and try to improve methods of predicting future violence among incarcerated offenders in order to reduce recidivism in prison and after release (if any), or (3) continue (or, as the case may be, resume) sentencing convicted murderers to death and execute some of them, with little or no rational connection between the likelihood a given offender will become a recidivist murderer and the decision of whether to sentence him to death.

The first alternative, like any attempt to effect greater safety for the general public by incapacitating a select few, clearly violates the categorical imperative because it uses these prisoners purely as a means to the ends of others. Non-Kantians might at this point raise a different objection: is such a strategy to achieve perfect incapacitation worth the cost? If such a policy were adopted not on retributive grounds (that is, on the ground that a murderer deserves to die) but on consequentialist grounds (that is, that society is better off running zero risk from murder by recidivist murderers), other questions must be asked. Is society really ready for such a draconian penal policy? Do the crimes prevented constitute enough harm avoided to be worth the price of executing an entire class of offenders (especially when it is reasonable to believe that only a small fraction of the class would otherwise have killed again)?

A perfect criminal justice system—a system that was not arbitrary or discriminatory or given to punishing the innocent, and thus unlike our actual system (Bedau and Radelet 1987 ; Radelet et al. 1992/1994; Radelet and Bedau 1998 )—might arguably claim the right to enforce a mandatory death penalty for convicted murderers. But would it be justified to exercise that right when the evidence shows that homicidal recidivism among convicted murderers is infrequent? Undeniably, there is recidivism among convicted murderers—in death-penalty jurisdictions as well as in abolition jurisdictions. Yet the same evidence shows that recidivism among convicted murderers is infrequent. As a result, a mandatory death penalty for anyone convicted of criminal homicide would result in the execution of thousands of convicted murderers, but without any very large reduction in the number of criminal homicides (or other felonies). Since we have no way of knowing who among the convicted murderers will murder again if not executed, a policy of mandatory execution for murder would involve executing thousands without much evident benefit (apart from deterrence and other considerations, of course). The sober truth is that perfect incapacitation of convicted murderers (via the death penalty) does not guarantee any reduction in criminal homicide (by avoidance of recidivist murder).

Intuitively, making the punishment fit the crime seems a fundamental requirement of justice, and seemingly the surest way to do this is to make the punishment like the crime—like it in the kind and quality of deprivation it imposes on the guilty offender. This is the strategy of the classic idea of lex talionis: justified punishments are like the crimes for which they are inflicted. Where murder is concerned, such punishments as whipping, maiming, solitary confinement, and other severe deprivations fail this test; intuitively, none of them ‘fits’ murder at all or as well as death does. So, where the crime is murder, we can make the punishment fit the crime most closely by using the penalty of death. On this basis, it is argued, murderers deserve to die—that is, the punishment they deserve is death (Davis 1996 ; Pojman 1998 ; Reiman 1998 ).

This reasoning is open to various objections, epistemological and otherwise.

5.1 The argument is really a form of special pleading. In general, society places little or no weight on making the punishment like the crime in order to make it fit the crime, and for good reasons. Arson, burglary, embezzlement, child abuse, serial or multiple murder, treason, espionage, and tax evasion are among the scores of crimes deserving severe punishment. But it is impossible to make any of them punishable by a punishment that ‘fits’, a punishment like the crime. So on what ground, in the face of such difficulties, can one defend the proposition that nevertheless the murderer must be punished with death, because only that punishment is sufficiently like the crime? Why this exception?

5.2 The argument relies on an unproved premiss. How do we know what punishment the murderer deserves, or indeed whether he deserves any punishment at all? One way to answer this question is to turn to whatever punishment is specified by law for the crime(s) of which the offender has been convicted. We might call this legal desert and argue that an offender deserves whatever punishment the law provides. But this notion of desert, while fully intelligible and readily applied, is entirely unsatisfactory from the moral point of view. It has the obvious objection that the deserved punishment for murder in Michigan (no death penalty) is not the punishment deserved next door in Illinois and Indiana (both death-penalty jurisdictions).

What we need is a concept of moral desert , a concept with general application and sufficient to enable us to answer (at least in theory) two questions: who deserves to be punished, and what punishment does he or she deserve? Abstractly considered, we can answer the first question this way: whoever is guilty of a crime and has no excuse or justification deserves to be punished. But the second question is not so easily answered. No doubt those guilty of the graver crimes deserve the severer punishments; this principle of proportionality has widespread appeal. However, there is no unique way in which to interpret this principle; ‘the worse the crime, the more severe the deserved punishment’ is a principle consistent with an infinite number of alternative punishment schemes (Pincoffs 1977 ; Bedau 1978 ), some of which do not involve the death penalty (von Hirsch 1976 ) even if others do (Davis 1996 ). As things stand, we are not agreed as to what punishment a given offender—a given murderer, say—morally deserves. The factors that must be taken into account in order to specify what a given murderer morally deserves are unsettled territory; the role of an abused childhood, for example, in mitigating an otherwise ‘deserved’ punishment is highly controversial. Desert sceptics understandably deny there is any rational or unique answer to these questions and for that reason reject desert as a normative principle on which to construct the penalty schedule.

5.3 The argument verges on circularity. Some who assert that murderers deserve death do so as their way of declaring that society ought to punish murderers with death, or that it is right to do so. If that is what their claim about desert really means, then appealing to the offender's desert ceases to be a reason for the death penalty. 'Murderers ought to be punished with death because they deserve to die’ makes sense whether or not it is true; ‘murderers ought to be punished with death because they ought to’ is too obviously circular to make any sense.

5.4 The argument is inconclusive. Even if it were true that a murderer could be said morally to deserve to be put to death, how is it argued that we (always?) ought to give him what he deserves? Does this not dismiss out of hand any consideration of forgiveness, not to mention other and lesser considerations? It seems to follow from this retributivist position that it is wrong (because unjust) for victims to forgive their victimizers. Of course, where murder is the crime, the victim cannot forgive the murderer (unless, which is highly unlikely, it were done in advance of the crime). By means of what argument do we show that ‘justice’ always necessarily trumps mercy and precludes forgiveness? Or suppose that it were enormously expensive to give an offender the punishment he deserves; ought we, must we, pay that price anyway? Suppose it were enormously expensive even to find out what a given murderer deserves; ought we, must we, pay that price? Public resources are a scarce commodity; on what ground do we argue that giving offenders the punishment they deserve takes high (the highest?) priority in the allocation of public expenditures? ‘Everyone always ought to get the punishment he or she deserves’ does not, on reflection, have thefinalityto it that retributivists would have us believe.

With this general discussion of crime prevention and desert behind us, we are in a position to give a closer look at the arguments for and against capital punishment. Debate over the death penalty is usually constructed out of a complex mixture of factual generalizations, common-sense conjectures, and hypotheses, in conjunction with various normative principles and social goals. Leaving entirely to one side religious and sectarian arguments for and against the death penalty (except for the discussion below in Section 6.4 ), let us consider first some of the typical claims made by those who support the death penalty, in contrast to the claims made by those who oppose it, assuming for the sake of the argument that the death penalty is con- fined to the punishment of murder (even though historically it has been used to punish an immense variety of crimes) and that any considerations arisingfromthe different methods of inflicting the death penalty can be ignored.

6. Arguments for the Death Penalty

Since the mid-eighteenth century in Europe, the initiative in arguing over the death penalty has been taken by those who are opposed to it; complacent acceptance of whatever is the current use of the death penalty has put its defenders in an essentially reactive posture. Let us reverse that procedure here and look first at the arguments favouring the death penalty. (Not all the authors cited for the arguments below are to be credited with originating the argument in question.)

6.1 The death penalty because of its severity and finality is more feared than imprisonment and deters some prospective murderers not deterred by the threat of imprisonment (van den Haag 1986 ). To put this another way, common sense tells us that, since people fear the death penalty more than they fear a punishment of imprisonment, they will be deterred more by the risk of incurring the death penalty than by the risk of imprisonment (Davis 1996 ; Pojman 1998 ).

Comment. This is an empirical proposition, and it immediately raises the question of what evidence there is to support it. (a) There is some anecdotal evidence given by arrested felons in police custody, for example, that they used toy guns, or no guns, rather than real guns, because using the latter might result in a felony murder and thus the risk of the death penalty. Whether such testimony is self-serving (telling the police what the arrestee believed they wanted to hear) or otherwise unreliable is uncertain, (b) Even if the death penalty is more feared than any less severe, humane punishment, it is obvious that thousands do not fear it enough to deter them. Criminal homicide statistics in the USA for the 1990s show that roughly 15,000 killers per year (that is, all those who commit criminal homicide in death- penalty jurisdictions) are not deterred by the threat of the death penalty, (c) It is possible that the death penalty is feared more than long-term imprisonment; even so, it may be that the punishment of life imprisonment is still severe enough to deter all those who can be deterred by any punishment (Conway 1974 ). (d) The deterrent effect of a punishment is not determined solely by its severity (or its severity relative to an alternative punishment), but also by the certainty and celerity of its imposition. The delays and uncertainty that surround infliction of the death penalty are a direct result of inescapable worries arising from its irrevocable character; these obstacles to maximum deterrence are not shared to the same extent by a punishment of imprisonment. As for improving the deterrent efficacy of the death penalty, that is impossible without ‘hurry-up’ procedures that will sacrifice the often-frail defences available to the accused that due process of law is intended to provide (Amsterdam 1999 ).

However, let us grant the original claim for the sake of the argument. Two fundamental problems remain. First, is it not plausible to assume that what this heightened fear of death provides to the would-be killer is, first and foremost, an incentive not to get caught? Only if it is also believed there is a high degree of certainty of arrest and conviction will this fear create a greater degree of deterrence. As things actually stand in American society today, a would-be murderer has one chance in three of not being arrested, and if arrested one chance in three of not being convicted of capital murder (US Federal Bureau of Investigation 1998 ).

Secondly, if fear of the death penalty is such a powerful deterrent and if deterrence is the primary consideration in our choice of punishments, why not threaten murderers with a still more frightening punishment, such as death preceded by torture, or death by means of a thousand cuts, or by burning at the stake? After all, if death is feared more than imprisonment because it is more painful (or a greater deprivation) than prison, then death by torture ought to be feared even more than death by lethal injection. If the only or the dominant consideration is instilling fear in would-be offenders, on what ground do we reject a system of really terrifying punishments? (Surely, not merely on the ground that the US Constitution forbids ‘cruel and unusual punishments’; see the discussion in Section 7.8 below.)

If the reply is that death preceded by torture is not a ‘humane’ punishment, then that invites this rejoinder: to rule out torture on the ground of its inhumanity is to accept tacitly some principle or criterion of humanely tolerable punishments. To do that is to open the possibility that the upper bound to morally permissible punishments might rule out the death penalty as well.

6.2 Let us agree that we do not have convincing evidence to show that the death penalty is a better deterrent than imprisonment. Even so, we ought to choose the death penalty—it is our ‘best bet’ (van den Haag and Conrad 1983 ; van den Haag 1986 ; Pojman 1998 ). Our situation is as follows. Either the death penalty is a better deterrent or it is not (we don't know which). And either we choose to adopt the death penalty or we do not. This yields four possibilities: (1) death is the better deterrent, and we choose death as the punishment for murder; (2) death is the better deterrent, but we reject the death penalty; (3) death is not the better deterrent, but we choose it anyway, and (4) death is not the better deterrent and we choose a lesser punishment. Our task is to choose between the pair of outcomes (1) and (3), or the pair of outcomes (2) and (4). Assume that each outcome has the same a priori probability as the other three. Defenders of the death penalty claim that the rational choice is the pair (1) and (3)—that is, we ought to choose the death penalty because the outcomes are better whether or not the death penalty is a better deterrent.

Why? Because the value to society of the outcomes in the pair (1) and (3) is greater than for the outcomes (2) and (4). After all, innocent lives are worth more than guilty murderers’ lives, and so the losses in outcome (2) are considerably greater than the gains; we must avoid outcome (2) at all costs. (The only possible gain in outcome (2) is that we run no risk of executing a few who are innocent.) The only way to avoid outcome (2) is to choose the pair (1) and (3). In outcome (1), the gains are much greater than the losses (which consist only in the deaths of murderers who deserve death anyway, plus the deaths of any who were wrongly convicted and executed). As for outcome (3), the loss is relatively slight; a few convicted murderers (guilty or innocent) are executed despite the fact that the general public gains no greater protection thanks to these executions. As for outcome (4), the gain is slight—no innocent murder convicts are executed—and the loss is zero. If we combine the gains and losses in the pair of outcomes (2) and (4), the losses clearly exceed the gains. We maximize the prospect of greatest gains and least losses if we choose to bet that the death penalty is a better deterrent, and that means choosing in favour of outcomes (1) and (3).

Comment. This argument, popularized (and perhaps invented) by Ernest van den Haag, has attracted more than its share of attention among philosophers, probably because it is so neat and abstract, appears to acknowledge our ignorance about deterrence, and caters to a common-sense belief that murderers are ‘worth less’ than their victims (Conway 1974 ; Bayles 1991 ; Pojman 1998 ). In several respects it is reminiscent of Pascal's Wager, a philosophical stalking horse for more than three centuries. Nevertheless, the argument has its weaknesses, (a) It is not clear that the argument applies to the real world of discretionary death indictments, plea bar- gains, trials, convictions, sentences, appeals, and executions—including execution of the innocent. And, if the argument does not apply to a world with these features, then it must be discarded as irrelevant, (b) Even if all four possible outcomes have equal a priori probability, the extensive search by social scientists for evidence of a special deterrent effect in the death penalty and their failure to date to discover any such evidence (recall Section 3) suggests that these four possible outcomes do not have the equal empirical probability. Awarding equal probability to the death penalty as a specially effective deterrent really just sidesteps the available empirical evidence. If we grant that the empirical probability favours outcomes (3) and (4), then it is not so clear that rationality requires us to prefer the pair of outcomes (1) and (2). (c) What the death penalty does is to risk the lives of innocent defendants wrongly convicted, without any scientific basis for believing that there is a commensurate gain in extra protection through deterrence. For all we know, everyone who is deterrable (and thousands evidently are not) is deterrable by a long prison sentence, in which case executing any prisoners produces no extra social protection (leaving aside any role for incapacitation to avoid recidivism), (d) If the death penalty brutalizes society, as some would have us believe, then the extent to which that result occurs has to be weighed against the conclusion of the Best Bet argument and the benefits it points to in extra deterrence, (e) Finally, if the death penalty as used in the USA should turn out to be a better marginal deterrent than long-term imprisonment, how can society be entitled to get the benefit of that extra deterrence when it is the product of a system riddled with injustice, maladministration, and error (see Section 7.6)?

6.3 It would be quite reasonable to support the death penalty if an execution of the guilty convict brought the victim back to life. If so, it seems unreasonable not to support it if an execution prevented, say, a hundred innocent persons from being murder victims (Pojman 1998 ).

Comment. Yes, it would be rational to support the death penalty if executing the murderer brought back to life the murder victim. But, since the death penalty has no such benefits and since there is no convincing evidence that the death penalty is a marginally superior deterrent, the alleged inconsistency can be ignored. What remains, however, just under the surface is the tacit accusation that opponents of the death penalty really do not care about the safety of the general public, much less the plight of the victims and their surviving loved ones. If they did (so the objection goes), they would be willing to embrace executions were it shown with reasonable assurance that executions actually did deter criminals undeterred by any less severe punishment. But embracing the death penalty on grounds of deterrent effectiveness ignores the risk of executing the innocent. (After all, the deterrent effect of a penalty is achieved by punishing the innocent as well as by punishing only the guilty, provided it is generally believed that the convicted defendants really are guilty.) And this leads to the following tu quoque: it is irrational to support the death penalty as a superior deterrent in the absence of convincing evidence to that effect and in the face of documented cases where innocent persons have been arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed.

6.4 Hundreds of thousands abstain from murder because they regard it with horror. One great reason why they regard it with horror is that murderers are hanged (J. F. Stephens, quoted favourably by van den Haag 1986 ).

Comment. If the idea of regarding murder with ‘horror’ means being horrified at the gross immorality of murder, disgusted and appalled at the thought of being a murderer (with the deserved opprobrium that implies), it is difficult to believe such a reaction is explained by a general awareness that convicted murderers are executed. Being aware that one is liable to punishment if one commits a criminal act does not teach that the act is wrong; what it teaches is that the act is risky. Awareness of the immorality of murder is best explained by awareness of the facts that murder is the killing of another human being without consent of the victim and that it causes the victim the gravest irremediable harm. Anyone can immediately see that murder violates familiar and common-sense moral principles, such as the Golden Rule. Awareness of that violation, not the punishment threatened for it, is what arouses moral ‘horror’ at murder.

6.5 Murderers have forfeited their right not to be killed (Pojman 1998 ).

Comment. The claim is familiar and looks plausible. No doubt we want a doctrine of forfeiture of rights in order to make punishment a legitimate possibility (lest the deprivations imposed in the name of punishment be themselves violations of the offender's rights). But there are at least two problems, (a) The claim invites us to say as well: rapists forfeit their right not to be raped, muggers forfeit their right not to be mugged, torturers forfeit their right not to be tortured, and so on. Surely, this is a reductio ad absurdum of the original claim, as there is no way with consistency to assert the claim in isolation in order to avoid embracing these ugly parallels. Tacit reliance on lex talionis can be discerned in the background, (b) We have to ask: if the murderer forfeits his right not to be killed, does he not also forfeit a right not to be killed in a long, drawn-out manner, say by crucifixion, particularly if he killed his victim in some such savage and cruel manner? Why are we not entitled to inflict death on the murderer in whatever horrible fashion he chose to inflict on his victim? Why does he not forfeit a right to be put to death promptly, painlessly, and with such dignity as circumstances permit? The very questions only need to be asked in order to see that there are upper bounds to permissible punishments that we ignore or flout at our peril. Why do those bounds not rule out modern, sanitized modes of inflicting the death penalty as well as cruel methods of carrying it out?

6.6 If I violate the rights of others, I therefore lose the same rights. Thus, if I am a murderer, I have no right to live (Primoratz 1989 a).

Comment. This remark expresses the idea (without using the word) of forfeiture of rights, by far one of the most influential weapons in the armoury of those who sup- port capital punishment. Undeniably, the general idea of the forfeiture of rights is a feature of any theory of rights worth taking seriously. More controversial, how- ever, is whether any or all rights one possesses can be forfeited. Philosophers at least since John Locke (1632–1704) have insisted that we have certain inalienable natural or human rights; our right to life is usually said to be such a right. A few philosophers have gone further and insisted that we also have certain unforfeitable rights; the best candidate for such a right is whatever right is taken to be constitutive of our status as moral agents (Vlastos 1962 ; Morris 1981 ). Do we or do we not, then, forfeit our very status as moral agents by virtue of committing a terrible crime, such as murder? (Remember, only moral agents are capable of immoral conduct. Or are we to believe that, by behaving immorally, one can cease to be a moral agent?) Is it possible to retain our status as a moral agent, despite being a murderer, and yet forfeit our right to life? These questions have no standard answer.

6.7 If the murderer forfeits his right to life by violating the right of another to life, then society is justified in imposing the worst type of punishments on the murderer (Pojman 1998 ).

Comment. The issue here is not what the murderer deserves; it is rather what we are free to do to him given his forfeiture of rights. Notice that this argument treats forfeiture of the right to life as a sufficient condition of justifiably executing the murderer. To do so is to treat the murderer's forfeiture of his right as the only relevant (or the dominant) moral consideration in deciding what we ought to do to him. Furthermore, according to this argument, we are permitted to inflict cruel ('the worst type of) punishments. No doubt a more charitable interpretation of this argument would have it that, thanks to forfeiture of rights by the murderer, society is justified in inflicting ‘the worst type’ of morally permissible punishments. But on what basis are we to draw the line between morally permissible and morally impermissible punishments? Indeed, on what ground are we to conclude that the death penalty is among the permissible rather than the impermissible punishments? Either way, with or without the more charitable interpretation proposed above, the argument falls short.

6.8 Since the value of human life is not commensurable with other values, there is only one truly equivalent punishment for murder, namely death (Primoratz 1989 a).

Comment. Although actuaries employed by insurance companies routinely put a dollar amount on the value of a human life (or limb), the rest of us are unlikely to share their confidence. Doubts on that score to the side, the incommensurabilty of values is not confined to the value of human life. Surely, being unraped, unassaulted, unkidnapped are also ‘not commensurable with other values’. So the incommensurability of the value of human life is not unique. No doubt we can say that the value of not being murdered is greater than the value of not being raped, and greater than the value of not being kidnapped, and so on. But, whatever reason there is to believe that ‘the only truly equivalent punishment for murder’ is death, is equally a reason for believing that the only truly equivalent punishment for rape is—being raped, and so on. Thus we encounter, once again, only a slightly disguised form of the old doctrine of lex talionis.

6.9 Since the murderer cannot plausibly claim a right to life for himself, neither can anyone else do that on his behalf (Primoratz 1989 b).

Comment. Let us grant that it is unfair to claim a right for oneself that one is unwilling to grant to others similarly situated. Let us further grant that it is unreasonable to expect someone whose right has been violated to respect the comparable right of the violator. But these concessions about rights do not suffice to tell us what the victim or society ought to do about the violation of the victim's rights. We can reach a decision on this crucial point only by means of some further normative pre- miss, such as this: morality poses no objection to punishing a murderer with death. That proposition, however, is not obviously true, because our rights do not exhaust the relevant moral considerations concerning what we ought to do (Thomson 1990 ); those other moral considerations remain to be examined.

6.10 Since it is morally right to be angry with criminals and to express that anger publicly, officially, and in an appropriate manner, this may require the worst of them to be executed (Berns 1979 ).

Comment. Is the world really a better, healthier place, thanks to the expression of anger at violent criminals by their victims or by third parties on behalf of the vic- tims? Ought we to teach our children to cultivate the emotion of anger at wrong- doers and encourage and help them to find ways to express that anger ‘in an appropriate manner’? What is an ‘appropriate’ expression of anger? And what is its proper target? (Think of the old saw, ‘Hate the sin, love the sinner'.) The feeling and expression of resentment—seeing oneself as an undeserving victim of another's immoral conduct and objecting to it—is understandable. So is moral indignation— seeing another as an undeserving victim of someone's immoral conduct and objecting to it. But both resentment and indignation are moral emotions—that is, they are regulated by moral considerations, in contrast to anger and revenge. These latter know no bounds; thus it might be said that they are always inappropriate, even if they are often excusable. After the anger, then what? (Consider the admonition, 'Anger in haste, repent at leisure'.) Or is one supposed to cultivate and sustain anger, relishing the feeling, savouring the excitement, and then act accordingly? Surely, this is a recipe for disaster in both moral and political relations.

6.11 If humans do not possess some kind of intrinsic value—say the image of God—then we have the right to rid ourselves of those who egregiously violate the necessary conditions for civilized living (Pojman 1998 ).

Comment. No doubt murderers, rapists, kidnappers, muggers, and other persons guilty of crimes against the person ‘egregiously violate the necessary conditions for civilized living’. But—as the story of Cain's punishment for the murder of his brother Abel teaches (Gen. 4: 8–16)—there is more than one way to ‘rid’ ourselves of their presence among us. In most capital punishment jurisdictions (China is a conspicuous exception), convicted murderers are routinely sentenced to prison. Only a small fraction is sentenced to death. Are they the worst among the bad, the most dangerous, the least likely to be incapacitated by prison, the least likely to be deterred by the threat of any punishment less severe than death? The empirical evidence suggests otherwise; at most, some among those sentenced and executed are ‘the worst among the bad', but many of the others clearly are not. (The criteria for their selection as death-row convicts had little or nothing to do with the above considerations.) Basing penal policies on purely secular considerations (as the argument assumes) does not free us from the constraints of reflective morality. Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov was wrong in thinking that, if God is dead, every- thing is permitted.

6.12 Persons in the Rawlsian Original Position behind a Veil of Ignorance would choose to live in a society with the death penalty for murder (Cooper and King- Farlow 1989 ).

Comment. If this reasoning were correct, it would tend to show that the death penalty is a fair or just punishment. But is it correct? Consider the following general facts about contemporary USA (such information must be available if one is to decide on any social policies behind the Veil): at the end of the twentieth century, there were annually (a) about 18,000 victims of criminal homicide, (b) 200–300 convicted murderers sentenced to death, and (c) 100 or so executed. Furthermore, (d) an uncertain percentage of all persons arrested, tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and executed are innocent, (e) there is no empirical evidence that the death penalty is a better deterrent than long-term imprisonment, (/) there is no empirical evidence that prisoners, guards, visitors are more at risk in the prisons of non-death-penalty jurisdictions than in the prisons of death-penalty jurisdictions, and (g) there is no empirical evidence that the police are less at risk in death-penalty jurisdictions than in jurisdictions without the death penalty. There is empirical evidence that (h) , if one is non-white or poor, one has a greater likelihood of being arrested, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death than if one is white and rich, and that (i) capital trial juries tend to make up their minds about the punishment the accused deserves even before the defendant is convicted; they do not understand the judge's instructions on how to decide between a life and a death sentence for the defendant they have just convicted; and even when they do understand those instructions they do not always follow them (Bowers 1995 ; Bowers et al. 1998 ). Furthermore, there is (j) a slightly greater likelihood of being a murder victim or a member of a victim's family than being a murderer or a member of a murderer's family, (k) a greater likelihood of being found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed than being innocent but found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed, (/) a greater likelihood of being poor rather than rich and thus at greater risk of being a murder victim and of being a murderer, and (m) a greater likelihood of being white rather than non-white, and to that extent at less risk of being a murder victim or a murderer sentenced to death.

Would a rational, self-interested person averse to running great risks conclude that he or she would be better off in a society with the death penalty for murder (in a discretionary, not mandatory, form) than in a society with no punishment for murder more severe than LWOP? Were one to turn out to be a murderer, it is reasonable to assume that self-interest would dictate that one would prefer prison to death. Were one to turn out to be a murder victim, one might wish the murderer to be punished equivalently, thus favouring the death penalty. ('Might’ because, improbable as it may seem, many survivors of murder victims are on record avowing that they do not want the murderer of their loved one to be put to death.) But, given the nearly equal likelihood of these two possibilities (and the small likelihood of being either a murderer or a murder victim), there is not much to tip the scale for or against the death penalty. These considerations suggest that there is no clear and convincing reason for wanting to live in a society that has the (discretionary) death penalty for murder, because there is no evidence of gain in security from the greater severity of the punishment over LWOP, and because there is evidence that the system is not fail-safe. Therefore, if Rawlsian contractarianism is the correct way to determine whether a social policy is fair, then it is unclear whether the death penalty in contemporary USA passes this test. To the extent similar considerations apply to other Western societies, the same verdict follows.

A somewhat more definite result emerges if we view the task of thinking behind a Veil of Ignorance (as Rawls does) as designed to help us make a choice among principles and only indirectly a choice for or against the death penalty as a policy. In this context, the issue concerns the choice of principles governing state interference with individual liberty, privacy, and autonomy. It seems reasonable to suppose that behind the Veil it would be in the rational self-interest of everyone to choose a principle empowering the state to make minimal coercive interferences and then only in pursuit of paramount social goals. As will be argued below (see Section 8), adoption of such a principle given the relevant facts yields a strong—indeed, the best— argument against the death penalty.

6.13 The death penalty is a symbolic affirmation of the humanity of both victim and murderer (van den Haag 1985 b).

Comment. The death penalty does nothing for the murder victim, and it has very diverse effects on the victim's surviving friends and family. So how execution of the murderer ‘symbolically affirms’ the humanity of the victim (something that life in prison presumably fails to do) is unclear. As for the ‘humanity of the murderer’ and its symbolic affirmation in his execution, that seems to be manifest in two ways. First, executing him shows him that he is not superhuman and hence not invulnerable to the kind of harm he inflicted on the victim. But, as that harm was a wrongful harm, it is not immediately clear why inflicting similar harm is not also a wrongful harm even when it is done through the criminal justice system. Secondly, finding the defendant guilty and sentencing him or her to death treats the defendant as a fully responsible moral agent at the time of the crime and at the time of execution. It would presumably be inhumane to execute an insane or otherwise non-responsible offender. However, not all those actually executed qualify as fully responsible moral agents even if they do not qualify as legally insane (consider the cases of Alvin Ford in Florida in 1991 (Miller and Radelet 1993 )) and Ricky Ray Rector in Arkansas in 1992 (Frady 1993 ). The claim in (13) is true, if at all, only in an ideal system of capital punishment; it is quite false as a description of every known actual system.

In any case, this consideration does not exhaust the symbolic significance of the death penalty. For its opponents the death penalty symbolizes ultimate and unlimited power over the individual by an impersonal government that operates ‘the machinery of death’ (Justice Blackmun, dissenting in Collins v. Collins. , 1994). Execution is not the only way ‘symbolically to affirm the humanity of victim and murderer'. Why should we believe it is the best way?

7. Arguments Against the Death Penalty

As the discussion in Section 6 shows, rebuttals to arguments for the death penalty amount to arguments against it. But not all the reasons for opposing the death penalty emerge in the clearest light if they are limited to the role of rebuttal argumentation. If the abolitionist seizes the initiative, the kinds of reasons that typically emerge include the following, each of which warrants a closer look. (Most of the arguments cited below, being part of the popular discourse on the subject, are not supported by a citation to any source.)

7.1 Governments have no right to use the death penalty.

Comment. This is perhaps the oldest argument against the death penalty, having been used by Cesare Beccaria (1738–94) in his path-breaking monograph, On Crimes and Punishments (1764/1995), the first notable attack on the death penalty. Beccaria argued that no rationally self-interested person would choose to live in a society that uses the death penalty (he might be its victim), and, since society has no right to do anything other than what its members would permit, therefore society (and its agent, government) has no right to adopt the death penalty. This conclusion may indeed be true, but the argument for it is inconclusive because it relies on a highly contested principle of legitimate government—namely, that a government has the right to threaten and inflict harm in punishment only to the extent that a rationally self-interested person would permit it to do so.

There are other problems with this claim, (a) It can be viewed as a theorem from a generally pacifist axiom forbidding all forms of punishment; if it is so viewed, it is unlikely to attract many supporters, (b) Few would deny that one's liberty and property are valuable to the owner, and yet the state has the right to take one's liberty and property as punishment. If so, then why not life as well? Either claim (1) is false, or the state has no right to punish at all, or there is something peculiar— indeed, unique—about taking life as punishment that is absent where taking liberty or property as punishment is concerned, (c) There is some danger of hidden circularity here. If one argues ‘The death penalty is wrong because no one has the right to use it’, that is coherent and possibly true. But if one tries to explain why the government has no right to use this punishment by claiming that it is morally wrong, then one is arguing in a circle, presupposing the very thing to be proved, (d) If the death penalty were a better preventive of crime than any alternative punishment less severe, some would argue that saluspopuli suprema rex and so government does have the right to use the threat of death as a deterrent.

7.2 The death penalty ought to be abolished because it violates the offender's right to life.

Comment. There are two major objections to this claim, (a) It would be a plausible argument if (but only if) one could defend the proposition that the right to life is absolute —that is, there are no moral considerations that could ever outweigh this right. But this seems unlikely. Consider self-defence or intervention as a third party on behalf of someone at risk of death by the lethal aggression of another. Are we to believe that it is always wrong—and, in particular, that no one ever has the right— to avoid being a victim of unjust life-threatening aggression by acting so as to disable the aggressor by taking his life? No one but an absolute pacifist believes this; and it seems highly irrational in any case, (b) Defenders of the death penalty will argue (see above, Sections 6.5–7) that, since murderers forfeit their right to life, only the innocent can find protection of their interests through their right to life. Precisely how the critic of the death penalty is to respond to this objection is unclear.

Nevertheless, the idea of a universal human right to life is of use to the opponent of the death penalty in the following way. It does seem reasonable to argue that in a very general way the burden of proof always falls on those who would take human life under whatever conditions. (To suppose that neither side of the argument has any burden of proof, or that the burden falls on those who would not kill other human beings, is too implausible to be worth discussing.) If so, then it is morally necessary for the advocates of the death penalty to explain why certain human lives ought to be taken as punishment.

7.3 The death penalty ought to be abolished because it ignores the value of human life.

Comment. This claim invites the challenge: what value is there in the life of a convicted murderer? As an empirical fact, given the great variety of persons convicted of murder, and the variations in their education, intelligence, dangerousness, talent, character, abilities, self-control, socialization, and so on, there is no plausible generalization to cover all cases and thus answer the question unequivocally. Empirical evidence amply sustains only this vague generalization: some convicted murderers can live a life of considerable value, to themselves and to others (the famous case in the 1920s of Nathan Leopold ( 1958 ) is a stellar and by no means unique example). But there are others, many others, whose lives are of little if any value to society, and of dubious value to themselves—as their suicidal despondency or their maladjustment to prison life indicates. The variable and often indeterminable value in the life of a convicted murderer makes it impossible to use this consideration across the board as a basis for rejecting the death penalty in all cases.

Again, however, opponents of the death penalty can rescue something of use to their argument. It is plausible to take as a baseline that each human life is (or could be) of value both to the person whose life it is and to others in the social environment. This puts the burden of argument on those who would endorse killing some persons on the ground that the disvalue of their lives manifestly outweighs whatever value their lives have. To be sure, judging the value versus the disvalue of a given human life is neither simple nor uncontroversial. Still, we have to countenance the possibility that, as a matter of empirical fact, we cannot reasonably believe the value of the life of every convicted murderer outweighs whatever is of disvalue in that life.

7.4 The death penalty is wrong because it flouts the sanctity of human life.

Comment. Unlike the other claims and arguments discussed in this section, this one is not secular. The sanctity of human life is a religious concept, especially familiar to Jews, Christians, and Muslims because of the biblical doctrine that man is made in the ‘image of God’ (Gen. 9: 6). Secular moral theory cannot use this concept, any more than it can pass judgement on the legitimacy of this religious norm. What can be said, however, is that the logic of the doctrine of the sanctity of human life puts the burden of argument on those biblical monotheists who believe in the death penalty, not on their co-religionists who would invoke this idea to protest the death penalty. In this connection, it is especially interesting to consider the argument of the recent papal encyclical, Evangelium vitae, The Gospel of Life (1995). In this treatise, Pope John Paul II argued that, in the absence of ‘necessity’ to protect human life, there is no justification for a penalty that takes lives, even the lives of murderers. The Pope reminds us of the story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4: 8–16); God punishes the murderer Cain with a curse, a stigma, and exile—but not death. No other biblical passage relevant to the death penalty involves a decree by God on the punishment of a guilty murderer in the way this passage does.

7.5 The death penalty is an affront to human dignity.

Comment. The concept of human dignity has played a surprisingly neglected role in modern moral philosophy; partly for this reason an appeal to human dignity in public discussion and debate often runs the risk of being merely a rhetorical flourish. What counts as respect for, in contrast to violations of, human dignity is far from clear. In sharp contrast to the role of rights, values, justice, virtues, and their several overlapping and interwoven norms, the concept of dignity is underdeveloped and inadequately integrated into the rest of normative moral theory.

Elsewhere (Bedau 1992 ), it has been suggested that the claim (7.5) above might be fleshed out as follows. First, it is an affront to the dignity of a person to be forced to undergo catastrophic harm at the hands of another when, before the harm is imposed, the former is entirely at the mercy of the latter, as is always the case with legal punishment. Secondly, it offends the dignity of a person to be punished according to the will of a punisher free to pick and choose arbitrarily among offenders, so that only a few are punished very severely when all deserve the same severe punishment if any do. Thirdly, it offends the dignity of a person to be subjected to a severe punishment when society shows by its actual conduct in sentencing that it no longer regards this punishment as the best or the only legitimate punishment for that crime. Finally, it is an affront to human dignity to impose very severe punishment on an offender when it is known that a less severe punishment will achieve all the purposes it is appropriate to try to achieve by punishing anyone in any manner whatsoever.

If there is an argument (such as the one above) against the death penalty on the ground of its affront to human dignity, it remains to be seen whether such an argument by itself would be sufficient to outweigh, say, an argument for the death penalty based on considerations of deterrence and incapacitation, or on desert.

7.6 The death penalty is wrong because its history shows that it cannot be administered fairly.

Comment. The available evidence strongly confirms the claim, and it is this claim that is probably the most influential of all the arguments against the death penalty for those who oppose it at present. From the decision of the prosecution on whether to seek the death penalty to the decision of the executive on whether to extend clemency, the administration of the death penalty—at least in the USA—has been and remains significantly'deregulated'. A wide variety of independent observers has reached this conclusion (Weisberg 1984 ; White 1991 ; Paternoster 1991 ; Bright 1994, 1995; International Commission of Jurists 1996 ; American Bar Association 1997 ; Acker et al. 1998 ). Few who have studied the matter carefully believe that this complex problem can be remedied by procedural reforms.

However, the implicit claim is that the deregulation characteristic of the death penalty is more pronounced or in some other way worse than the (de)regulation of long-term prison sentences. If there is evidence to support this claim, it is obscure and underdeveloped. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to grant that, if the death penalty is a more severe sanction than LWOP, then ceteris paribus its mismanagement is worse than whatever mismanagement characterizes administration of the alternative punishment.

But is this deficiency, even if true, a sound basis on which to abolish the death penalty? Critics of the objection in claim (7.6) above are quick to point out that it is addressed entirely to the administration of this form of punishment, and not to the death penalty itself. They will add that every form of punishment meted out by the criminal justice system involves errors and mistakes in its administration; the death penalty is hardly unique in suffering from such shortcomings. They will argue further that the maladministration of the death penalty is not an argument for its abolition. Opponents of the death penalty will reply that it is artificial to distinguish between a flawless death-penalty system (possible only in an ideal world utterly remote from ours) and the actual flawed systems under which we live and have always lived, and in which real persons are put to death by a system that seems to resist significant reforms and improvements. There is no such thing as ‘the death penalty itself; there are only the actual systems under law, warts and all. Any attempt to distinguish the death penalty as such from the death penalty as actually administered under law in a given jurisdiction distracts us from the evaluation of the death penalty in the only forms we actually have it (Black 1981 ). Friends of the death penalty divide over whether this problem (especially as it involves seemingly irreducible racism) is so grave as to undermine whatever merit there is in the death penalty taken abstractly as a just punishment (Berns 1979 ; van den Haag 1986 ).

7.7 Even though murderers do deserve the death penalty, it is desirable for a modern state to refuse to impose such punishments, because such punishments are inconsistent with the civilizing process characteristic of modern states (Reiman 1998 ).

Comment. This argument, which might be called the Advancement of Civilization Argument, owes its inspiration to the French sociologist Emile Durkheim (1858–1917). His so-called ‘laws of penal evolution’ claim in part that, the more advanced a civilization becomes, the less it practises brutal corporal punishments. Cruel punishments, like torture, cause great pain and require the utter subordination of the punished to the punisher. From this point of view, the death penalty is like torture, a retrograde and counter-civilizing practice. ‘Torture is to be avoided not only because of what it says about what we are willing to do to our fellows, but also because of what it says about us who are willing to do it’ (Reiman 1998 : 115). Thus the refusal to carry out lethal punishments even on those who arguably deserve them contributes significantly to this civilizing process.

One advantage of this argument is that it can concede the chief demand of the retributivist—we know what punishment murderers deserve; it is the punishment most like their crime—while arguing that other considerations have a predominant role in determining whether society ought to use this mode of punishment. The result is this: although murderers deserve to die, and thus society has a right to sentence them to death and execute them, society ought not to do so (and certainly has no duty to do so), because the system we use to determine who ought to be executed is itself fundamentally unjust. The death-penalty system in the USA is fundamentally flawed, so that the justice of the death penalty taken in the abstract is undermined by the injustice of its actual administration. (This final step in the Advancement of Civilization Argument amounts to recycling the empirical considerations central to the argument in Section 7.6).

Abolitionists who are also desert sceptics need not reject this argument, because its main features remain intact whether or not one endorses the retributivist features it embraces. They are independent of any advancement of civilization effects that forswearing the death penalty allegedly produces. On the other hand, there is some danger of circularity in this argument. Using abandonment of cruel practices like torture as a criterion of a civilized society guarantees that the death penalty cannot survive in a civilized society, provided that the analogy to torture is accepted. But some will surely reject the analogy, just as others will grant that civility is incompatible with barbaric punitive practices but will deny that the death penalty is necessarily barbaric: what is so barbaric (they will reply) about a substantially painless execution by lethal injection?

7.8 The death penalty in the USA is wrong because it violates constitutional protections.

Comment. If this claim is meant to be an accurate statement of the status of the death penalty at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as seen by the Supreme Court in its role as the ultimate legal interpreter of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, then it is false. Beginning with its decision in Furman v. Georgia (1972), the court has whittled away at the permissible scope of death penalties. But the court also ruled by a majority of 7 to 2 in Gregg , v. Georgia (1976) that the death penalty perse is not in violation of the eighth amendment prohibition of'cruel and unusual punishments'. The court has also implicitly rejected any suggestion that the death penalty inherently violates some other constitutional provision, such as ‘due process of law’ (fifth amendment), ‘equal protection of the laws’ (fourteenth amendment), or unenumerated rights of the person (ninth amendment). It is, of course, possible to argue (as some have) that the court is wrong, and that it has misinterpreted these provisions of the Constitution (Black 1981 ; Bedau 1985 , 1992 , 1996 ).

From the moral point of view, however, these constitutional considerations really are beside the point. Even if the US Constitution were interpreted by some future Supreme Court to rule out the death penalty, one would still have to face the question whether such interpretations were based on sound moral theory. ‘Ought we to abolish the death penalty?’ cannot be answered with any finality merely by a decision of the Supreme Court to the effect that, contrary to Gregg and related cases, the death penalty really is inherently inconsistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

7.9 The death penalty is wrong because it violates international standards of permissible and humane punishment.

Comment. The death penalty in the USA and in several foreign countries, as administered, is clearly in violation of international human-rights standards. Those standards prohibit execution of anyone under 18, whereas several US jurisdictions permit juveniles under 18 but over 16 to be executed (National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 1997 ). They also prohibit execution of the mentally disabled. US law makes no exception for women, whereas international human-rights law for- bids their execution. The US Government has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights with explicit reservations on these two issues, reservations that have been challenged by other signatory nations (Schabas 1997 ). In 1999, the UN Human Rights Commission voted for a worldwide moratorium on executions; the USA was one of eleven nations voting against this resolution.

However, as with the constitutional objections to the death penalty discussed above, objections based on international human-rights law are of interest from the moral point of view only to the extent that the human-rights laws in question are persuasive and can be incorporated into a sound normative moral theory (Nickel 1987 ). As with legal norms generally, international human-rights norms are not ultimate but are at best only penultimate considerations.

7.10 The death penalty ought to be abolished because conditions on death row are morally intolerable.

Comment. There are two versions of this argument. One stresses the fact that conditions on the death rows of death-penalty prisons in many nations leave much to be desired. These conditions have a harmful and enduring effect on most of those who have to undergo them, especially when death-row prisoners in the USA may spend a decade or more before their cases are finally resolved. The other argument simply points to the long duration of life under a death sentence for many prisoners, and claims that, no matter how decent death-row conditions are, the long delay in reaching a final disposition (execution or some form of relief) is itself a cruel and inhumane treatment. Friends of the death penalty will deny that these conditions are beyond remedy, and will insist that the remedy need not lie in abolition of the death penalty. Is it not more plausible to argue, they will say, that, if the conditions on death row are truly inhumane and intolerable, then they ought to be remedied as swiftly and completely as possible—and that their remedy is entirely a separate issue from abolishing the death penalty? Abolitionists using this argument must defend the proposition that these conditions by the very nature of the case cannot be adequately remedied, and that the only remedy is not only to dismantle death row but to abolish the death penalty itself. But is that true? Surely, it is not unreasonable to reply that, quite apart from abolishing the death penalty, prisons ought to abolish wretched and indecent conditions of incarceration, period.

7.11 The death penalty is too expensive to support.

Comment. Executions are indeed much cheaper than long-term imprisonment, if all one counts in the cost is the pro-rated salary of the prison personnel as they monitor each death-row prisoner and prepare for and carry out a death sentence, plus whatever material costs are involved (food and security while on death row, a dose of lethal gas, lethal injection, a dozen rifle bullets, electricity, or the hangman's rope) and other pro-rated costs. A much better way to think about the cost of the death penalty is to calculate the costs of a criminal justice system in which every murder indictment raises the question of whether the accused is to be tried as a first-degree murderer and thus be made vulnerable to a death sentence. This requires tracking the typical costs of murder trials and subsequent appeals in which the death penalty is sought versus the comparable costs incurred in murder trials and appeals in jurisdictions without the death penalty. Research by several different investigators that takes these considerations into account reveals that a typical modern death penalty system in the USA is far more expensive than an alternative system of LWOP (Dieter 1994 ). Thus the claim advanced in (11) is true, so far as cur- rent calculations permit.

If, however, justice or other moral considerations showed that a death penalty system really is required, then deciding between its abolition and retention in favour of the less expensive system would represent a refusal to finance a requirement of justice. The only way in which the greater costs of a death-penalty system constitute a relevant criticism of that system is if the death penalty can also be criticized on moral grounds.

7.12 The risk of executing the innocent, however small, is too large a risk to run.

Comment. Calculating the risk of wrongful execution is very difficult. During the twentieth century in the USA, that risk may have been quite small: out of over 7,000 executions, only a few hundred have been carefully examined, and of these 0.3 per cent (= 24 cases) seem highly probable to have involved an execution of the innocent (Bedau and Radelet 1987 ). How should we tell whether this risk is too large to accept? Are abolitionists in danger of exaggerating the risk of erroneous executions? Perhaps. Imperfect though the system is, for every person believed to be innocent but executed in recent years, seven or eight innocent prisoners under sentence of death were vindicated in time to be released; some of these defendants narrowly escaped wrongful execution (Radelet et al. 1992). Were the death penalty known to be a superior deter- rent to imprisonment, one might argue that risking the lawful deaths of a few inno- cent prisoners (but of course not known to be innocent) is worth the added protection for hundreds of innocent citizens (recall the argument in Section 6). But the evidence on deterrence prevents that argument (see above, Section 3).

Some defenders of the death penalty (van den Haag 1986 ) concede that the death penalty may occasionally fall upon the innocent, but they argue that this is not a reason to abolish the death penalty, any more than it is a reason to prohibit automobiles and trucks from the highways when we know that statistical lives will be lost in traffic accidents. This objection, however, overlooks two important points. (a) Highway traffic provides many incontrovertible social benefits, whereas it is arguable whether the death penalty provides any (or any that outweigh its costs, economic and otherwise), (b) The death penalty is an intentionally lethal system, whereas the use of high-speed vehicles, highway design, and traffic regulations involves no such intention at all. Since highway deaths are accidental, not intentional, the provocative comparison is irrelevant.

8. The Best Argument for Abolition

Whatever argument one regards as the best argument for or against the death penalty is bound to reflect one's beliefs about the best argument for a system of punishment generally. Accordingly, it may be most useful to end this discussion with an examination of what may be the best argument currently available in favour of abolition, an argument that best merges empirical generalizations and norms, practical as well as abstract considerations.

Governments ought to use the least restrictive means—that is, the least severe, intrusive, violent methods of interference with personal liberty, privacy, and autonomy—sufficient to achieve compelling state interests.

Reducing the volume and rate of criminal violence—especially murder—is a compelling state interest.

The threat of severe punishment is a necessary means to that end.

Long-term imprisonment is less severe and restrictive than the death penalty.

Long-term imprisonment is sufficient to accomplish (2).

Therefore, the death penalty—more restrictive, invasive, and severe than imprisonment—is unnecessary; it violates premiss (1).

Therefore, the death penalty ought to be abolished.

The seven steps of this argument have been elaborated elsewhere (Bedau 1999 ) and are of rather different character. Premiss (1) states a fundamental liberal principle of state intervention at least as old as John Stuart Mill's essay On Liberty (1859/1975). Premiss (2) states a goal any society must pursue if it hopes to endure. Premiss (3) is an empirical proposition generally accepted and warranted not only by common sense but by reflection on the conditions of social order. Premiss (4) is an empirical proposition supported by evidence from the behaviour of death-row prisoners (who rarely attempt suicide and rarely dismiss their lawyers in order to ‘volunteer’ for execution). Premiss (5), also an empirical generalization, is based on experience with abolition of the death penalty in many societies, including several states in the USA. Conclusions (6) and (7) follow accordingly. The argument overall is entirely forward looking and allots no role to retribution or desert in the general justification of punishment (and a fortiori none in justifying the death penalty), although the argument can accommodate these ideas in deciding who ought to be punished (namely, all and only the guilty who lack a credible excuse or justification).

This argument is not invulnerable to criticism. Premiss (5) and thus the conclusion in step (6) will of course be rejected by those who believe in the deterrent superiority of the death penalty when compared with LWOP or other forms of long-term imprisonment. But, this criticism aside, the basic objection to this argument by defenders of the death penalty will not focus on contesting any of the other steps in the argument; they have no reason to quarrel with premisses (1), (2), or (3). Nor do they have reason to quarrel with step (4); defenders of the death penalty must believe this empirical claim, or else their support of the death penalty involves preferring what they believe to be the less severe punishment. As for step (5), some will accept and others will contest this premiss. Conclusions (6) and (7) are unavoidable given the prior steps. Where does this leave the defenders of the death penalty?

The focus of their objections will be on what this argument entirely omits— namely, any reference to the unique (or, less extravagantly, the relatively superior) fit between the penalty of death and the crime of murder, and the feelings of out- rage and indignation provoked by crimes against the person, especially by murder. Thus, the inference to the conclusion in (6) can be blunted by asserting and defending further premisses (FP) such as these:

to the greatest degree possible, a punishment ought to reflect the gravity of the crime,

a punishment reflects the gravity of the crime to the extent that the loss or deprivation it imposes on the offender is equivalent to the loss or deprivation the crime imposed on the victim, and

the death penalty expresses public outrage and indignation at murder as well as what the murderer deserves better than any (tolerably humane) form of imprisonment, such as LWOP.

Opponents of the death penalty probably cannot accept (FPi); and, if they reject this premiss, it does not matter whether they accept or reject (FP2). What they cannot do is accept both these premisses and still oppose the death penalty (unless they were to defend some such implausible view as that murder does not impose on the victim as great a loss or deprivation as the death penalty imposes on the offender). They must then either reject (FP3) or come up with a reason why this true premiss is nonetheless not dispositive, because countervailing considerations prevail. They might reach that conclusion if the following were also true:

The death penalty brutalizes society and provokes disrespect for human life within prisons and among the general public.

Were some such empirical generalization true, one might plausibly argue that it cancels (or at least puts into doubt) the importance of (FP3). If the discussion of this section is correct, then even the best argument against the death penalty is not beyond challenge. Deciding which side of the dispute has the better of the argument will require further reflection on the moral and political norms and empirical generalizations employed in the various arguments for and against abolition, restoration, retention, or revision of the death penalty.

Acker , James R., Bohm, Robert M., and Lanier, Charles S. ( 1998 ) (eds.), America's Experiment with Capital Punishment: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Ultimate Penal Sanction. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press.

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Cases Cited

Callins v. Collins , 510 US 1141 (1994).

Furman v. Georgia , 408 US 238 (1972).

Gregg v. Georgia , 428 US 153 (1976).

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1400+ EPQ Ideas That Guarantee An A* (For Each Subject)

In A-Level by Think Student Editor February 21, 2019 45 Comments

Disclaimer: These EPQ ideas are only here to inspire you and (hopefully) help point you in the right direction.

When creating this list, we researched all over the web to see what EPQ ideas people had in the past. We added the EPQ ideas, that we thought were suitable, to the list. However, many of these EPQ ideas were thought up by fellow students for the purpose of this article.

Anyway, we hope you find inspiration from at least one of the EPQ ideas below.

Table of Contents

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Medicine

1. do care homes provide adequate care to dementia patients.

This extended project idea is a fantastic one to explore if you are interested in the support networks that are available across the United Kingdom for patients that can’t look after themselves independently due to factors outside of their control (such as dementia). If you decide to pick an idea surrounding dementia, it is important to know a wide range of facts about the condition. Due to this, a helpful book on dementia might be worth reading  ( personal recommendation here). 

2. The ethical issues surrounding stem cell research

Stem cell treatment has been on the rise ever since its initial development. Along with the rise of stem cell treatment usage, a rise in ethical questions surrounding the practise has accompanied it. Below are some example of questions that could be discussed if you were inspired by this project idea:

• Is it right to destroy human embryos in order to harvest stem cells?
• If life doesn’t begin at contraception, does that make stem cell research more ethical?
• If stem cell research becomes highly effective, should we still research alternative treatments that don’t have ethical doubts?

If you want more information surrounding stem cells and their use in treatments,  take a look at this book.

3. Should self-inflicted illnesses be treated by the NHS?

There are so many different aspects that you could talk about when it comes to this EPQ idea, as there are so many unique situations that can be discussed. An interesting angle for this idea would be how the NHS would differentiate self-inflicted physical illnesses and mental illnesses – these two overlap heavily, therefore they would make for a really interesting talking point.

Another topic that could be discussed is the physical effects of mental depression on an individual. If you’re interested,  take a look at this book that talks about depression in significantly more detail.

4. How much should doctors and nurses be paid?

Many people would argue that doctors and nurses belong in the most important profession group there is – with the people who disagree with that, still thinking that they are extremely important to the operation of our society. Although there is wide spread agreement on how important doctors and nurses are, not many people agree on how much they should be paid for their work.

The disagreement, when it comes to medical worker’ pay, makes this idea an interesting and somewhat controversial point of discussion for your extended project.

5. At what point does gene editing become unethical?

With medical advancements becoming significantly more prevalent in modern day society, ethical issues are needing to be considered. Some scientific and medical experts are considered to be “narrow-minded” and too focused on their field, which many believe leaves them in a position where they perhaps overlook the ethical considerations surrounding their line of research.

Gene editing is one such area of contention, where people can find themselves feeling uncomfortable with the idea of modifying naturally-produced genes. CRISPR-Cas9 is a recent method used when performing gene alterations and if you decide to complete an EPQ project, based on gene modifications, an understanding of CRISPR and the Cas9 protein is essential. Some useful resources surrounding CRISPR-Cas9 are listed below:

• LiveScience – What is CRISPR?
• Amazon.co.uk – Gene-Edited Babies
• Amazon.co.uk – The Power of CRISPR

6. Is mass-cloning of livestock a good idea?

The financial potential of mass-cloning in the agriculture sector is massive and that is exactly why the idea of it has manifested into a reality. There is so much to talk about when it comes to not only the draw backs of mass-cloning, but also the advantages. I recommend that you take a look at  this book by Joseph Panno,  which explores the history of animal cloning, the experiments undertaken and the potential impact of the artificial development of the process.

7. Should we use medication to treat mental health problems or focus on other forms of treatment?

Relying on medication to control emotions is a problem and it is definitely not the correct method, if used in isolation. That being said, medication usage, with proper supervision, can be unbelievably effective in temporarily tough situations.

If choosing an EPQ that matches the theme of this idea, some medication that you could discuss are listed below  (more can be found here):

• Escitalopram
• Fluvoxamine

Alternatively, below are some treatments that do not require prescription drug usage:

• Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
• Diet and Nutritional Input

8. Should animal testing, in regards to medications, be allowed?

The contributions of animals to the medical field have been monumental in the development of vaccines, treatments and cures. However, just because animal usage increases human safety and trial effectiveness, does that necessarily mean it should be allowed?

The book named  Animal Testing (Debating the Issues) by Gail Terp  discusses many views points surrounding the issue of animal testing.  Providing you don’t plagiarise any of his arguments or viewpoints,  it can be a really helpful resource for you when completing your EPQ.

9. Why is asthma raging out of control?

7.7% of American adults have asthma  according to a CDC study.  This means that asthma is extremely widespread and impacts millions of people each year. In addition to this,  asthma has been on the rise since the 1980s in all demographics.

In your extend project essay, you could discuss the factors that have contributed to asthma’s rise and you could even go as far to make projections as to when the “asthma curve” will plateau.

10. Could there ever be any viable medications for obesity?

Obesity is often the result of a lack of exercise, usually combined with an uncontrolled diet. However, obesity can also be complicated by factors out of someone’s control. These factors could include an underlying physical condition.

In these cases, where an underlying condition is causing obesity-related problems, could medication to treat that condition subsequently fix the obesity itself? If so, in your EPQ, you could discuss the factors that can cause obesity and which ones could benefit from either current or future medications.

11 – 70 Additional Extended Project Qualification Ideas

11. How should we define health and disease? 12. Is euthanasia ever appropriate and why? 13. How do abortion treatments affect the mind and body? 14. How often does overdiagnosis occur and what are the effects of it? 15. How effective are home remedies compared with pharmaceutical drugs? 16. How long will it be before our antibiotics stop working and what effect will this have? 17. How much is unnecessary healthcare costing the NHS? 18. What’s to stop another disaster such as the thalidomide scandal happening again? 19. Are the consequences of breaking patient confidentiality severe enough? 20. Should pharmaceutical companies be privately owned? 21. Are nurses and doctors trained appropriately for emergency situations? 22. Would the increased use of technology in hospitals reduce medical mistakes? 23. Are prejudice and racism affecting the performance of the NHS? 24. Who is to blame for the lack of knowledge in personal health across the UK? 25. How is our food supply chain affecting the effectiveness of antibiotics? 26. Is the UK healthcare system prepared for a pandemic? 27. How has medical error become so common in healthcare? 28. Medicinal marijuana and its effect on the brain and body. 29. Is addiction to painkillers properly managed by the NHS? 30. Why are so many people unaware of how common drugs work? 31. The ethics surrounding human experiments and trials. 32. Is bioprinting the future of organ transplants? 33. Were doctors responsible for the opioid epidemic? 34. What are the elements of nanotechnology and is it helpful in treating cancer? 35. The impact financial resources have on the NHS and its treatment success. 36. The role of antidepressants in treating depression. 37. Should homeless people have a right to free medical treatment? 38. Should heroin addicts be administered injections to recover from their substance abuse? 39. What role does the World Health Organisation (WHO) play in combating epidemics? 40. Can people with different ethnicities be affected differently by the exact same disease? 41. What are the steps taken when developing a new vaccine? 42. How does smoking influence the effectiveness of modern medicine? 43. Why does the NHS not have enough funding and are they spending their current funds inefficiently? 44. How to tell the difference between viral and bacterial infections. 45. What impact do support workers have on the NHS and what do they do? 46. Should junior doctors be trusted to carry out life-changing surgeries? 47. Are care homes run properly and should more detailed checks be carried out? 48. Is the main ingredient for a good healthcare system money? 49. Are our phones spreading colds, diseases, and cases of flu? 50. Is the mental health of doctors and nurses being taken seriously enough? 51. Should the NHS be privatised? 52. Does healthcare rely on technology too much? 53. Should vaccination be made compulsory? 54. Why is medical malpractice on the rise within the NHS? 55. Do clinical trials for new drugs take too long? 56. How have treatments for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s developed over time? 57. What effect does music have on the human brain? 58. Is a Vegan diet better for the human body? 59. Whose decision should it be to turn off life support for an ill baby? 60. What methods could be employed to completely eliminate Malaria? 61. Could there ever be a single cure for all cancers? 62. What really causes Alzheimer’s disease? 63. Could we ever stop ageing? 64. Is healthcare a human right? 65. Should medically assisted suicide be legal? 66. At what point does an embryo or foetus become alive? 67. How much control should doctors have over society’s choices? 68. Poliomyelitis and how it affects a sufferer within society 69. How big is the risk of someone waking up during a general anaesthesia? 70. How does long term stress affect your physical body?

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Psychology

1. is it ethical to use psychological ‘tricks’ to benefit the economy.

Psychology as a subject has a huge range of applications, and so it is important to consider where the uses of psychological ‘tricks’ are ethical and when they are not. There are plenty of ways that individuals can be manipulated to behave in certain ways, but should these be used in relation to the economy, or is it too unethical – even if it leads to overall benefits?

You may want to think about how psychology could be used:

• In marketing/advertising
• In persuading people to do essential things, such as paying bills

This idea gives you a wide range of things to think about and discuss, though you may want to get started by having a look at  this book about economic psychology.

2. How observations made by the trolley problem will become useful as self-driving cars are developed

The trolley problem is a well-known psychology experiment which has a huge ethical element. But how can it be applied to everyday situations? The development of self-driving cars is sparking many ethical debates, as well as concerns about safety.

A great idea for your project would be to consider how the trolley problem can be applied to the development of self-driving cars.

To get you started on this idea, you may want to consider the trolley problem in depth, and what the implications of the reaction to the problem are. Here is a  helpful book which might be able to get you started  on developing your answer to this question.

3. What goes on inside the brain of someone who is prejudiced?

Prejudice is a prevalent issue within society today, and understanding its causes in individuals, may enable us as a society to combat the issues that arise as a result of prejudice. This is an incredibly interesting area to look at, and would make for a great discussion in your EPQ.

Although prejudice is a very broad term, there are some books which may help you start thinking about your project, and one of my recommendations can be  found here . This is just a starting point, and may provide you with some insight into the research which you would like to find out more about in order to apply it to your question.

4. How someone’s brain changes when they are in love

Love is an ambiguous concept, and therefore understanding it, and the effect that it has on individuals is a very interesting subject to explore. You may find that love has an impact on the brain in a number of different contexts. Literature is available for different areas of this kind of research.

For example, you may be interested in studying the impact of love on the brain:

• In terms of romantic relationships
• In babies and infants

You apart from looking at published books, you may also be able to gain some insight into this topic from news articles, such as  this one . If a subject is of current interest and being covered in the news, it is likely that there will be more recent research for you to use in your project.

5. Why do some people combat depression by excessive eating?

Depression, its causes, and possible treatments are all topics of huge general interest at the moment. Researching the coping mechanisms of some individuals who are going through depression incorporates an interest in mental health issues with a current and relevant problem.

In more general terms, you may want to consider the impact that diet has on depression, and whether it should be emphasised to individuals who are suffering from depression. There are many books and research papers out there which may inspire your project, including:

• Anxiety & Depression: Eat Your Way to Better Health
• The Inflamed Mind

6. How the Asch Conformity experiment contributed to the field of Psychology

One of the key experiments in the psychological field is Asch’s conformity experiment. It has led to the development of new ideas in the field of social influence (i.e. conformity), and has also produced real-world knowledge and applications.

You may be interested in finding out about the wider implications of this research in the field of psychology, and there are a number of specific impacts which you could discuss in your work. There is already some literature out there which discusses classic studies such as these, and you may want to use them as a starting point for your own research.  This book  may be a good place to start.

7. Was John Money’s gender reassignment experiment unethical?

Ethics are an important part of psychology, and controversial research studies such as the one conducted by John Money are incredibly interesting to discuss (a summary of Money’s research can be  found here ).

Gender and its role in society and individuals’ lives is an incredibly relevant topic now and the implications of study such as this could have wide implications (if valid), but were the techniques used ethical? And could the findings be generalised to the wider population?

If you are interested in psychology, a project which demonstrates your understanding of ethics is something that will be incredibly useful.

8. How does child abuse affect someone’s mind later in life?

Child abuse is a very sensitive topic, and the impacts of it can be huge. Although this may be a difficult subject to investigate, it is incredibly important that we have an understanding of issues such as these.

Some of the areas which you may want to discuss include:

• The impact on future romantic and peer relationships
• The impact on having children of your own

You may also want to look into individual stories about abuse and its impacts, as well as the coping strategies that people use to make it possible for them to move forward in their lives as best as they can. An example of a story from a survivor can be found  here.

9. Would children with mild learning difficulties perform better if they weren’t told about their disadvantage?

This is a huge debate in psychology, and would be a really interesting topic to tackle in your EPQ. The impact of mild learning difficulties on the lives of individuals is something important that should be understood in detail.

The impact of a diagnosis could be huge, and there is a debate about whether individuals should be told about learning difficulty diagnoses if it does not impair them in their everyday lives. You may want to think about:

• In which scenarios is it not useful to give a diagnosis?
• Is it ethical to withhold a diagnosis, even if it may have a negative impact on the individual’s life?

10. Which parenting style is the best for a child’s future?

Every parent thinks that their parenting style is the most effective and beneficial for their children in the long term, but is there one way to raise children that is really the best for them?

This topic is great for an EPQ idea, as there are so many aspects which you could discuss. There is also a wide range of literature available out there to guide parents through parenting techniques, and you may want to take a look at these as a basis for evaluating techniques in terms of how effective they are. An example of useful literature could include  this book.

You may want to narrow down this topic by looking at specific techniques which are beneficial for one specific age group.

11. How do hallucinations affect the brain and its functions? 12. Borderline personality disorder – its elements and the methods used to treat it. 13. What psychological effects do animals have on the human brain? 14. The Stanford prison experiment and its effects on modern psychology. 15. Does spending more time within nature positively influence mental health? 16. How does being an only child impact social development? 17. Have the methods utilised by rehabilitation centres proven to be effective? 18. The effects of PTSD on family relationships. 19. How do diet and exercise affect the mind? 20. How necessary is social interaction for a human? 21. Should therapy be free for people who witness extraordinary violence? 22. How have suicide rates developed in the last century? 23. The elements and effects of Lyme disease on the brain. 24. What is the psychological impact of drinking alcohol? 25. Does premature birth always impact a child’s cognitive development? 26. Do parents’ expectations of their children affect their mental health? 27. Can you generalise the results of animal testing for humans? 28. How does the body repair itself after severe brain damage? 29. The detrimental effect of attachment issues on relationships. 30. What is the best experimental design for observing natural human behaviour? 31. What were Konrad Lorenz’s contributions to the field of psychology? 32. What are the implications of conditioning in psychology? 33. How did Albert Bandura’s studies aid the understanding of violence in children? 34. When do babies first start remembering and for what duration? 35. What factors influence the likelihood of getting dementia? 36. In what ways can you slow down the development of Parkinson’s? 37. What are the potential effects that vitamin deficiencies can have on a babies development within the womb? 38. How does ADHD arise in young children and what are the factors leading to it? 39. Schizophrenia and its impact on children. 40. Do genetics have a part to play in depression? 41. The ways concussion can have lasting effects on the brain’s functions. 42. Autism on a spectrum and its diagnosis. 43. How does connectivity within the brain affect the ability to learn new skills? 44. The ongoing effects of epilepsy on patients and their families. 45. How does the brain of someone with bipolar disorder work? 46. What are the complications involved in treating elderly patients with dementia? 47. Psychosis in children and its difficulties. 48. Is it possible for the brain to be in a complete state of concentration? 49. How does a hearing impairment impact balance and the brain? 50. How does the perception of colour occur and what effect does it have on our emotions? 51. What does someone’s non-verbal behaviour say about them? 52. How governments control a population’s behaviour on a massive scale. 53. What characteristics make someone a good leader? 54. How often do mental disorders stem from previously occurring physical disabilities? 55. To what extent could an obsession with a particular individual be classed as a mental illness? 56. The long-lasting effects of PTSD across Britain after World War 1. 57. Do we know what causes an addictive personality yet? 58. The impact of OCD on a sufferer within today’s society. 59. The advancements being made within the field of programmed consciousness. 60. The psychological effects loneliness can have on an individual. 61. What makes a child become a bully? 62. Does letting a child play violent games make them more aggressive? 63. What do someone’s dreams really say about them? 64. Why do people struggle so much to focus in the short term to achieve long term goals? 65. Why does the brain create false memories? 66. What makes a child antisocial? 67. Why do people have irrational phobias? 68. How someone’s social cognition develops over time 69. How does someone’s mind-set change as they get older? 70. What causes someone to be attracted to a particular person?

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Law

1. is capital punishment justified.

In 1955 the last women in the UK to ever be subject to capital punishment was hanged  (learn more here).  Since the abolishment of the death penalty, many have felt as if some criminals don’t face the same justice they did back in the day. However, is this thought process itself unjustified or does it have merit?

In your extended project, you could talk about so much to do with capital punishment. You could even go as far as to contrast how different countries have (and haven’t) abolished capital punishment over the years. If you decide to take on a capital punishment themed EPQ project,  this book by Simon Webb  may be useful in your research phase.

2. Is claiming insanity a loophole for criminals?

It is theorised that the association between someone with a mental illness and a someone who commits certain types of criminal activities is great. In short, crime can often be directly linked or indirectly associated with a particular mental illness.

However, would you just be cynical if you thought that some criminals use this fact as an excuse? How much merit is there in this particular accusation? If you are interested  take a look at this book on Amazon.co.uk,  regarding the relationship between mental illness and crime.

3. How does science help us solve crimes?

Forensic studies can be a fascinating field and a wide reaching one two, so why wouldn’t you write an EPQ essay about it? From DNA testing to old fashioned fingerprint recognition, there is so much you could discuss on the topic of crime and detection.

There really isn’t one particular avenue to go down with this idea, pick something you enjoy researching and writing about and go for it!

4. What are the most effective ways to lower the crime rate?

Crime is usually a topic commonly discussed at a localised level. The stories you hear about crime are usually related to a particular case or incident. However, an interesting EPQ could discuss the ways crime could be addressed at a national level, or even an international level.

Some methods that are used at a national level are as follows (all of these you could discuss in your essay):

• Reducing particular cash payment methods
• Increased background checks on specific purchases
• Enabling more transparency by use of various different disclosure schemes

A book you might find worth reading surrounding this topic  can be found here.

5. Which police interrogation method is most effective?

With lots of interrogations now being recorded, there is plenty of content out there for you to draw conclusions from, in relation to the methods used by state police during interrogations.

One angle here might be to discuss the efficacy of a particular questioning method, whilst contrasting it to how ethical said method is. Furthermore, you could also start to bring in other factors such as how difficult or easy the method is to perform. Afterall, it doesn’t matter if a certain interrogation method is 100% effective if no police officer can be trained to follow it out.   

6. What is the role of mass media during a high-profile investigation?

There is constant controversy when it comes to mass media. The height of media controversy was revealed to the public in 2016, where the “fake news” scandal hit the US and spread its wings internationally.

So, when it comes to investigations that are in the public eye, what effect does the media have on the following:

• The ability for an investigation to be carried out in a timely manor
• The outcome of an investigation
• The reliability of an investigation’s results

Fantastic books regarding the field of Criminology and the media are all over. If you find yourself wanting to go down the route of an EPQ relating to this idea, I highly recommend you find yourself a good book on the topic. An example of one such book  can be found here.

7. What special laws are there to control gangs and how do they work?

Gangs normally prop up into conversation when prisons are discussed, however, this is most definitely not the only place where gangs can form. Gangs often form in everyday society and only sometimes stretch out to prison systems.

Throughout an EPQ project, you could discuss how various different gangs have had impacts on different societies across the globe through history. After discussing the impact of gangs, I would recommend that you contrast the impacts before and after particular legislation was introduced. This way you could dive really deep into which laws worked and which ones didn’t and draw some very interesting conclusions on the best legislation to fight gang related crime.

8. The history of Scotland Yard

Scotland Yard (officially now, the New Scotland Yard), in contrast to the name, is responsible for most areas of Greater London. Not many people have significant knowledge surrounding the headquarters and it might make for a fascinating EPQ project to discuss the HQ’s impact over time.

9. How can the government undo previous wrongful convictions?

Wrongful convictions are not as rare as most people believe. In the US alone, it is estimated that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners currently incarcerated are innocent  (read more).  With such staggering margins of error, an evaluation on how justice systems wrongly convict innocents would be a very strong project idea.

When completing an EPQ project that discusses mischarges of justice, I believe that it would really helpful to have a bank of stories that are relatable to the idea of wrongful convictions. Due to this I personally recommend getting  this book off Amazon.co.uk.  This book is full of true stories of people who have been wrongly convicted.

10. How do international courts work and when are they used?

Not dissimilar to crime in general, courts are usually discussed on a local level. That said, international courts do exist and they can often be very, very confusing. A brief discussion on how they work would be enough to make up an entire EPQ project alone, however, putting it alongside a discussion on when they should be used would make it all the more interesting.

11. Should the UK be introducing more environmental laws? 12. Are our immigration laws sufficient? 13. Why do we still have useless and old laws that are not acted upon in today’s modern society? 14. Are the laws concerning evidence and procedures in a courtroom fair? 15. How does our legislation reflect the country’s moral principles? 16. Do legislators only pass laws for political reasons? 17. How is male rape treated differently to female rape in court? 18. How long should paternity leave be and is it a fair concept? 19. Is it possible to tamper with an employment contract? 20. At what point can law representatives intervene in family life and is there ever a justifiable reason to do this? 21. How do human rights differ in different countries? 22. How can a person’s incompetence be determined from a legal perspective? 23. Should laws be employed surrounding the area of tax avoidance? 24. To what extent is it possible to accidentally commit tax fraud? 25. Should there be limits on free speech? 26. Should voting be mandatory by law? 27. To what extent would bringing back the death penalty impact crime rate? 28. Should genetically modified food be banned under the law? 29. The blurred lines of Copyright law. 30. Should a law be introduced where all police encounters are recorded? 31. Should prenuptial agreements be more widely accepted? 32. Does modern technology aid the legal system or does it simply add unneeded complexity? 33. What should the age of criminal responsibility be, should it be different for certain crimes? 34. Should artificial intelligence be introduced into our legal system? 35. Is the hierarchy of the main civil courts the most effective way to run the legal system? 36. Are the rules regarding legal fees fair and just? 37. Have the laws successfully kept up with the times or is our current legal system outdated? 38. Should people be detained without bail before they stand trial? 39. In what circumstances should prisoners have the right to vote? 40. Is employment protection sufficient or does it need updating? 41. How do intellectual property rights affect the economy? 42. Are crimes actually enforceable? 43. What is the role of the legal system in preventing domestic violence? 44. To what extent should scientists influence the law? 45. How effective are the probation laws in the UK? 46. What effect has Brexit had on EU and UK laws? 47. How effective is the supreme court in carrying out its roles? 48. Are junior lawyers experienced enough to manage high-responsibility cases? 49. Data protection and its many faults. 50. How does the law determine what qualifies for negligence? 51. Which legal systems support refugees and how do these systems work? 52. The differences between the UK and US police forces. 53. To what extent do anti-gun laws infringe on people’s individual liberty? 54. Which methods are most effective at detecting whether or not a prison has been rejuvenated? 55. What is diplomatic immunity and why does it exist? 56. How are war crimes prosecuted? 57. At what age should children have access to the internet? 58. Is allowing women to work as front line police officers safe? 59. How can the misuse of power by the police force be dealt with effectively? 60. Should the seat belt law be removed in the UK? 61. How the internet has bred new forms of crime, such as revenge porn 62. Are the laws regarding cybercrime outdated? 63. Why can a single crime have so many different punishments? 64. How accurate are eyewitnesses to a crime? 65. How should we deal with false convictions? 66. Do police cameras violate people’s right to privacy? 67. Should prostitution be legal? 68. Where did the UK’s laws originate from? 69. Are anti-terrorism laws inflicting on people’s privacy rights? 70. How much would it economically benefit the UK to bring back the death penalty?

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Economics

1. how fair is the progressive income tax.

The first progressive income tax system was implemented in order to be fairer to each member of a country’s population, regardless of their income. From the moment the tax system was implemented, there have been widespread arguments about whether or not the system did what was intended.

The concept behind the progressive income tax system is that the more money someone makes, they higher the proportion of their income they should pay towards taxes. At least that is the idea. In reality, the proportionality of taxable income only increases in “wealth bands” which many people disagree with.

In your extended project, you could contrast the currently accepted progressive income tax system to a one of the below different tax systems:

• Regressive Tax System
• Flat Tax System

2.  Should there be a minimum wage?

National minimum wages were introduced to protect workers from getting underpaid in the workplace. A minimum wage, enforced by the government, requires every employer within a nation to pay above a certain hourly rate.

However, the concept of a minimum wage does not bring just advantages, it also can have its drawbacks. Some argue that a minimum wage can lead to unemployment and in certain cases, actually make no difference to the general population’s average wage.

If you are interested in exploring this EPQ idea,  take a look at this book on Amazon.co.uk.  It talks about the direct and indirect effects of the introduction of a minimum wage.

3. Why is inflation bad for the economy?

Inflation is something we all hear about on the news and we often don’t really have a full understanding of the economic term.

Before even considering this idea, you need to take a step back and learn what inflation is and how and why it fluctuates. Without a good understanding on the financial concept, you will struggle to draw up conclusion within your EPQ.

There are plenty of absolutely free resources on the internet that you can use to learn about inflation. Below, I have listed a few some fellow students found useful:

• Khan Academy

4. How has the UK’s economy developed over time?

With the height of the UK’s economic influence being during the British Empire, it would make for a fascinating project to explore how the UK economy changed before the Empire and since its collapse.

This is a massively broad topic as there are numerous aspects of the economy you could talk about, with each aspect having sub-aspects you could delve deep into. With this idea, it really is down to your economic preference.

5. What affect has Brexit had on the UK economy?

The Brexit vote took place in 2016 and the UK finally left the European Union in 2020. In the four years preceding the actual “divorce”, as many are calling it, the uncertainty alone had huge impacts on the UK economy. So, if just the thought of Brexit shuddered the economy, what will Brexit actually happening do to the economy?

Trade, diplomatic relations and finance are all topics you could discuss within an extended project. All of which promise to be just as controversial as the last. When completing an EPQ, make sure you are factual and try your best to be unbiased when analysing statistics.

6. What affect does illegal immigration have on the UK economy?

Immigration by itself seems to cause arguments over the dinner table, but illegal immigration is an entirely different ball game.

Many are sympathetic to illegal immigrant’s reasoning and feel that, as a country, we should be significantly more accepting of people from more challenging backgrounds. In direct contrast, some people feel as though everyone has an opportunity apply for citizenship legally and illegal immigrants should be treated with firm policy.

An interesting book by Elizabeth F. Cohen  talks about the American immigration system and its many failures. It may be worth a read, if you are considering this EPQ idea.

7. What affect does legal immigration have on theUKeconomy?

We’ve talked about illegal immigration, now let’s talk about legal immigration. Immigration is the foundation of many countries across the globe. Arguably the most powerful country in the world, the United States, was completely built up from immigrants.

If this is the case, why do so many people hate the idea of immigration and why are they often hostile to immigrants? After all, if they came to the country legally, what is the problem? Well, you could address all of those questions within your EPQ project!

8. How did the 2008 financial crisis affect the UK economy?

The 2008 crisis had wide reaching implications on economies across the globe. An essay on how different parts of the UK in particular suffered during the economic crisis may be interesting.

You could talk about the following economic statistics and how they changed:

• Unemployment rate
• Average household debt

9. The myth of “trickle down” economics

During the 2016 US presidential election, trickle-down economics was featured a few times more than once. The theory behind trick-down economics, is that when the wealthiest within a society acquire more wealth, they purchase products and this subsequently “trickles down” into the pockets of less wealthy Americans.

However, many believe that in practice the concept is a myth and rarely works. An EPQ project with an angle of “The Myth of Trickle-Down Economics” could be seriously interesting. Read more about trickle-down economics  here.

10. The effect trade tariffs have on associated countries

Trade tariffs and their place in the global economy is unknown to many people. So, an EPQ educating people on what they are and the effects they have could be really useful. Take a look at some of the questions you could address below:

• What are trade tariffs?
• Do trade tariffs benefit countries equally?
• Why is there so much controversy surrounding trade tariffs?

11. Does the UK have the financial ability to accommodate more immigrants? 12. How may a consumer’s preferences affect their decision to purchase a product? 13. How have monetary and fiscal policies changed in recent years? 14. What is the role of the financial markets in a world of uncertainty? 15. How helpful are SWOT and PESTLE analysis in the economic world? 16. Why might an economy experience disequilibrium? 17. How can Marx’s theories be applied to today’s economies? 18. The future of economics regarding artificial intelligence and modern technology. 19. How did Brexit affect the EU economies? 20. The influence of behavioural economics on globalisation. 21. Can environmental economics solve the problem of climate change? 22. What does the future look like for emerging economies? 23. What is the difference between economics and finance? 24. The economic theory surrounding diamonds and water and how it is applied. 25. What is the impact that demand and supply have on pricing during an economic crisis? 26. Is perfect competition ever possible? 27. Are the world’s wealthy economies built on debts? 28. How do unemployment rates affect the economy? 29. How will the decline of high street stores impact the economy? 30. How petrol and diesel prices fluctuate over time and how these prices mirror real-world events. 31. What are the chances of another global recession? 32. The contribution of higher education towards the economy. 33. How can countries maintain a balance of trade in a crisis? 34. Does the government properly manage fiscal policy? 35. How does a country control its consumer spending? 36. Why can economics often fail to account for the value of housing? 37. Why are most countries moving towards a free-market economy? 38. How can irrational consumer behaviours damage an economy? 39. Economics as a social science. 40. How do economies successfully allocate and utilise scarce resources? 41. The relationship between marginal benefit and supply and demand. 42. How do economies account for surplus amounts of supply? 43. How and why does a market fail? 44. The effects of income and prices on consumption choices. 45. How to effectively benefit from economies of scale. 46. The consequences of exiting a market. 47. Is the policy regarding monopolies strict enough? 48. The impact of a trade union on employment. 49. What are the factors that shift the demand for labour? 50. How has economics been affected by the change in our lifestyles? 51. The many misconceptions surrounding the gender pay gap. 52. The impact that a 35-hour working week has on an economy. 53. How can cartels manipulate oil and gas prices? 54. Is the high street really dying or just evolving? 55. Can the high street bounce back from the recent downturn in revenue? 56. Which factors contribute to a high unemployment rate? 57. The importance of coffee price fluctuations over time. 58. What is the fairest income tax system? 59. Would a flat tax rate aid the economy more than a progressive tax rate? 60. Which factors determine house pricing? 61. 11. What causes inflation? 62. What are the effects of having a high minimum wage? 63. Are the European economies too reliant on each other? 64. What affect did WW2 have on the economies of the world? 65. Why do socialist economies always fail? 66. How has the global demand for oil changed over time? 67. The pros and cons of a privatised health care system 68. Why does capitalism cause monopoly’s? 69. How can people get out of the poverty trap? 70. Why wealth inequality is not as big of an issue as people think

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To English

1. how to have an effective debate.

The ability to have debates is an important skill, and can be applied to many different jobs and scenarios. It is essentially the ability to form rational, fact-based, well-structured arguments, and be able to understand and respond to the counter-arguments in a reasonable, effective way.

This is a great English EPQ idea because it is not only focused on language skills, but also has a wonderful range of applications, which can be used in your life in the future.

In order to start this project, you may want to consider looking at a broad book which details some debating techniques, such as  this book , which gives a wide range of information about debating.

2. What impact did literature have during WW2?

Literature has always been a tool that has been used to record experiences, as well as to aid people in getting through difficult times. You therefore may want to consider doing some research about the type of literature that was produced during World War 2, and the impact that it had on people at the time.

You could consider discussing:

• How much literature actually was published in the war years?
• Who were the most influential writers?
• How did the literature written impact the people during the war?
• How has the literature continued to affect people since the war?

3. Are girls better at English than boys?

The gender differences that are of aren’t present with certain skills or subjects can be really interesting to explore. In terms of relation to English, you can explore the differences between girls and boys in their general abilities in the subject, and either confirm or challenge the stereotypes.

Subjects such as these give you the opportunity to really debate whether or not there is a difference, and the reasons why or why not this is true.

You could start by looking at some existing arguments alongside academic research around these subjects.

• ‘Gender differences in Girls and Boys Brains appear Biological’
• ‘Sex differences in early communication development’

4. Should English literature be optional at secondary school?

As you know from doing your GCSEs, you don’t technically have to pass English Literature (its English Language that is the core subject). So, should all GCSE students be forced to study English Literature?

This idea would give you the opportunity to express your opinion in a structured, evidence-based way, and would be a great way to show off your English abilities in terms of debating skills.

• What are the benefits of teaching English Literature to all students?
• How could the time spent teaching English Literature to students be used if students did not have to engage in the subject? Would there be benefits to this?

5. How did literature change in the 1800s?

Looking at the development of literature over the years is a really interesting route to go down for your EPQ. The 19th century was an era of change for a number of reasons, and obviously this had a huge impact on the literature at the time.

There were major changes in general opinions and outlooks about the world due to new scientific research and publications. Theories such as Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution brought into question general, well-established views of the world, and this was reflected in the literature of the time.

For this project idea, you may want to follow a love of reading, and evaluate specific books of the time, comparing them to literature before the 1800s. You could also have a look at books which provide a summary of the societal changes in the 1800s and their causes.  My recommendation can be found here.

6. Why is mass media so biased?

Bias in the media is another societal issue which would be interesting to discuss in your project. English and journalism are very linked, and you may want to consider looking at:

• The reasons for bias in the media
• How bias in the media is represented – what kind of language techniques are used?
• How can bias in the media be combatted?
• What are some examples of biased media?

7. What techniques do writers use to make the reader agree with a particular opinion?

English techniques can be incredibly persuasive, and the use of specific techniques can be a really interesting area to consider for an EPQ project. There are a variety of ways which you could approach this subject, and this is one of the things that makes this a great choice.

This is an idea which could not only enable you to recognise and understand the techniques that writers use, but it can also help you to improve your writing, and persuasive skills.

There is some literature about this subject already, and an example of a  useful book can be found here . You could also consider analysing specific speeches and pieces of literature which have had impact in the world.

8. To what extent are journalists at risk of being replaced by computers?

The takeover of jobs by computers is a concern for many people, and so it is interesting to consider what makes a job something which just a human is capable of doing. Is journalism one of these careers? What are the reasons for your judgement?

You may want to look at subjects which are in the news currently, and some examples of these news pages can be found here:

• Microsoft ‘to replace journalists with robots’

This may lead you to some further information, and could start your consideration of the elements of journalism that could be replaced, as well as the reasons that we need human journalists.

9. Are books becoming obsolete?

Literature has always been an important part of society. It gives people the chance to escape from struggles which they are facing, and also often reflects the context in which it was written. We can look back on literature from certain time periods and gain insight into the experiences and beliefs of people at the time.

However, there are so many forms of media at the moment, and you might be able to argue that literature is starting to lose its impact. Your project could discuss:

• What are books being replaced by?
• What are the reasons for this?
• What impact does this have on society?
• What impact will it have on future generations?

10. What made Shakespeare’s plays so unique?

Shakespeare is arguably the most famous English writer in history, and you will have certainly come across his work in school, and heard about Shakespeare in general society. But what made Shakespeare so influential? What was unique about his writing?

You can look at the works produced by Shakespeare in order to discuss his plays, and identifying the unique elements yourself is something that will make your EPQ a very strong essay. You can find a  book of Shakespeare’s complete works here .

You can also find books which show you the analysis skills which you will need to evaluate Shakespeare’s work,  such as this one here . You may want to use these as a starting point for your project.

11. How did Shakespeare present the effect of tragic madness in Hamlet? 12. How has creative writing changed throughout the course of history? 13. Will technology influence the originality of creative writing? 14. Why are the best books in history being turned into films and do the films live up to the books? 15. How do literary techniques affect the reader’s perspective? 16. How Jane Austin used her novels to address feminism and its effect at the time. 17. To what extent has literature addressed mental illness in the 20th century? 18. How has the perception of love and relationships changed in English novels over the last century? 19. Is poetry the same as it was 100 years ago? 20. Is the use of narrators becoming outdated? 21. How did the English language evolve and is it still evolving? 22. Will Shakespeare’s work stop be being taught due to a lack of understanding? 23. Is “text speak” undermining the English language? 24. Do the common abbreviations we use today actually make sense? 25. Should English teachers take on a more practical approach? 26. Is knowing how to spell important anymore with spell check to do it for you? 27. Do English teachers properly prepare students for university exams? 28. The importance of authentic English. 29. What are the most effective ways to teach young people the correct vocabulary? 30. The role of language teaching for dyslexia students, does it work? 31. Why general English is not enough for employability?. 32. How do you tailor English skills for specific jobs? 33. Does the ability to communicate effectively impact confidence? 34. Can gaming support language learning? 35. The importance of grammar in modern language. 36. Should English be considered an art or an academic skill? 37. Do different motivations change how students learn English? 38. Does homeschooling affect the ability to learn English properly? 39. Why is learning English so different from learning other subjects? 40. Can English minimise cross-cultural communication challenges? 41. Why has English grammar always changed? 42. Does the type of language we use influence the way we think? 43. What does the future of the English language look like? 44. Is the way we analyse literature outdated? 45. Why is English so widely spoken? 46. Why has the representation of masculinity not changed in the English language? 47. Why are more neologisms used today? 48. How has our pronunciation changed? 49. How Greek mythology is portrayed in English novels. 50. How is argumentative writing taught in schools? 51. What effect does illiteracy have on a person’s career? 52. How does literacy rate affect the development of a country? 53. What are the most accurate methods to determine someone’s reading age? 54. How does dyslexia affect a child’s ability to learn how to read and write? 55. Is it right for GCSE and A-Level English exams to be timed? 56. Is the demand for English graduates increasing or decreasing? 57. The rise of gothic literature. 58. What effect has the internet had on journalism? 59. To what extent do the writing styles of men and women differ? 60. Are native English speakers advantaged over others? 61. How have gender roles changed in novels over time? 62. Evaluating the political agenda behind many poems 63. How was religion portrayed in 20th century British novels? 64. Evaluating the importance of symbolism in literature 65. What contributions did Shakespeare make to literature? 66. Did Shakespeare actually write the plays he’s famous for? 67. How have attitudes towards literature changed over time? 68. How has our use of language changed since the development of the internet? 69. How does literature affect culture? 70. The origins of punctuation and why it was needed

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Business Studies

1. how should market monopolies be addressed.

A market monopoly is commonly known to occur when a single company or a cluster of companies have an extremely high percentage of a share of the market. Market monopolies are bad for many reasons; some are listed below:

• Monopoly-driven markets often have higher prices than markets driven by competition.
• Monopolies can gain too much power over a democracy if the nation is small enough, or the company is big enough.
• If a company has a monopoly, increased efficiency is not incentivised, therefore, innovation can be less.

If you want more advantages and disadvantages of market monopolies,  take a look here.

2. How can the UK government incentivise entrepreneurship?

High levels of entrepreneurship would be a great thing for the UK government. After all, the more people who wish to start their own businesses, the more businesses there will be. More businesses will always lead to more jobs, which is a good thing for everyone.

So, if everyone wants more entrepreneurship, how can we incentivise it in our society effectively? This is the question you should aim to answer if you take on this EPQ project idea. There are many different avenues you can take with this idea, ranging from government grants to decreased taxation.

What you will find during your EPQ is that for every incentivisation that effectively leads to increased levels of entrepreneurship, there will be plenty of drawbacks. For example, decreased taxation very well may increase the number of start-ups incorporated, but short-term, may lead to lesser government revenues.

3. How much do taxes hurt small business owners?

When people think of taxes, they usually let their minds sway towards their personal income tax. However, income taxes are not the only tax and small business owners most definitely know it. Below, I have listed some of the other taxes that business owners have to worry about:

• Corporation Tax
• National Insurance
• Value Added Tax (VAT)

Many small business owners, especially in the retail and hospitality sectors, have razor thin margins already and taxes can often push them to their budgeting limits. This can sometimes lead to closures and shutdowns, which over the course of a medium to long term period, can have the reverse effect of the government collecting less in taxes. This leads to the question of is it really worth having all of these taxes?

To understand more information on taxes that business owners are subject to, I recommend that you  take a look at this book on Amazon.co.uk.

4. Should the corporate tax be lowered?

Corporate tax has been the central point of many arguments over the decades. Lots of business owners and some policymakers feel as though it punishes companies that have finally made a profit. Making a profit can be a yearlong venture for many companies and some argue that when they finally cross the threshold of sustainability, they should be rewarded, not punished.

If the corporation tax was lowered, would the economy gain from the move or would the government not only receive less tax revenues in the short term, but also the long term? This a great question that you could discuss during your EPQ.

5. What factors have influenced marketing and how?

Marketing has been significantly influenced by the growth of the online sector. However, marketing has changed in many other ways than just the move to online. In your EPQ, you could discuss either the online transition or the many other ways marketing has changed.

Before starting an EPQ project of this nature, I would recommend take a look at some marketing-themed books, that instruct businesses on how to market their products  (example here).  This will give you a good idea of what methods companies are using today.

6. The psychology behind advertising

One such way marketing has changed has been related to the increased understanding of human psychology. “Psychological tricks” are often used in marketing campaigns. This has led to many people questioning whether the use of these “tricks” have led to consumers not having a true fair choice when deciding on a purchase.

If you want to know more about the relationship between psychology and corporate marketing,  take a look at this book.

7. What creates a good business leader?

Everyone can think of a least one business leader they have heard of, whether it be Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or any one of the thousand others. Business leaders are required to possess extraordinary organisation and communication skills. Although there are some pretty standard traits of successful business leaders, they are all very different.

Due to this, a study into what characteristics lead to the absolute best business leaders would really interesting. Below are some characteristics that have been rumoured to be effective at predicating a good business leader:

• Charismatic

Although you should not take it as fact,  this book  will get you thinking about the characteristics of a business leader.

8. What factors motivate employees and how?

Working for someone else is often seen as a bad thing, but it doesn’t have to be. What can a business do in order for it to motivate its employees to not only be happier in their line of work but also be more productive.

Some business owners have gone down the route of offering shares in the company to their employees. This leads to the employee feeling a significantly more direct impact of their work as they themselves directly benefit from the company performing well.

Below, I have listed some techniques business owners have attempted. Each one is linked to a resource where you can learn more about the particular case study.

• Offering shares to employees.
• Implementing a minimum salary, above the minimum wage.
• Making offices super nice!

9. What is a fair salary for a CEO?

CEOs work very hard in a lot of cases. In return, they are usually paid the big bucks. However, many people have the opinion that CEOs pay is not proportional to the amount of work they do. Why not express your views on this topic within your EPQ Project? You could discuss one set of views and then directly contrast it to other people’s views who do not agree with you.

Ensure that for every opinion that you discuss, you provide subsequent evidence – ideally with references. To find more information about what a CEO’s job entails,  take a look at this article.

10. To what extent has mobile technology changed advertising?

Mobile phones have taken over the technology market and advertising has adjusted to the new audience. How has it changed and in what ways will it continue to change over the coming years? There is lots to discuss on this idea and I’m certain it would make for a great project.

11. The effect of refinancing a business. 12. Why would a business want to diversify into a new market? 13. What are the complications of globalisation for a well-known business? 14. What is the impact of the decline in high street stores for larger corporations? 15. How does operational performance affect a business’s share price? 16. Is Amazon the reason for the decline in high street stores? 17. The importance of creativity within a business. 18. The value of becoming a private limited company. 19. Is a business’s life cycle set in stone? 20. Does organisational structure affect the internal performance of a business? 21. Should corporate social responsibility be adopted by all businesses? 22. The ways to control a business’s supply chain. 23. What are the stages of decision making within large corporations? 24. Do shareholders put too much pressure on businesses for dividends? 25. Does an increase in autonomy improve performance of employees? 26. How do businesses decide on their sources of finance? 27. How to evaluate the risk involved with new ventures. 28. How does politics intervene in the business world? 29. How do businesses use big data within marketing? 30. The important elements within entrepreneurship that lead to success. 31. How is project management run? 32. How does organisational culture differ in the largest businesses in the world? 33. The relationship between accounting and business. 34. The legal and ethical considerations that need to be made when operating in other countries. 35. The role of research and development for a company. 36. How the leaders and managers of a business influence the attitude of the entire organisation. 37. Which methods classify as sustainable manufacturing? 38. Is constant innovation needed to compete in a sector? 39. How do businesses change their strategies? 40. The value of planning and control within a business. 41. How to properly analyse a market. 42. How economics impacts business activities. 43. How to build good relationships with consumers. 44. How to improve product quality. 45. How to manage intellectual property within a business. 46. What are the processes within the administration of a company? 47. How helpful are business models for managers? 48. Should business studies be taught in all schools? 49. What are the attitudes of a successful entrepreneur? 50. How important is stock control? 51. How much should a company pay its employees? 52. How has the airline industry developed over time? 53. How has automation affected the world’s economies? 54. To what extent is Spotify’s business model sustainable? 55. How does VAT affect UK businesses? 56. Do big international companies pay their fair share in taxes? 57. How are successful start-ups formed? 58. What is the real impact of a strike on a business? 59. The ethical problems surrounding a business outsourcing their work. 60. Are the government incentivising start-ups enough? 61. Has the music industry been hurt by the rise of the internet? 62. How and why do business adapt their marketing strategies? 63. How can companies tackle the issue of climate change? 64. Evaluating the case for a single global currency 65. How apple became the tech giant it is today 66. The value of apprenticeships for employers and employees 67. How does a business change when transitioning from private to public? 68. Why is amazon protected from current monopoly laws? 69. How can oligopolies result in market collusion? 70. How to make an effective logo for your business

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Ethics

1. the complicated ethics surrounding self-driving cars.

Self-driving cars raise a variety of ethical issues, and this is a really interesting issue that is currently relevant, and would therefore be very interesting to discuss in an EPQ.

This is because situations arise where drivers are required to make choices about who to protect in terms of traffic accidents. For example, should self-driving cars prioritise their passengers or pedestrians?

These issues require great consideration, and from an ethical standpoint, they can be discussed in a broad way. This is great for an EPQ, and you may choose to make your discussion more specific (i.e. you could focus on one specific ethical issue that arises from the use and development of self-driving cars).

2. Should we experiment on embryo’s for medical research?

This is an enormous area of debate, which has many different viewpoints, which are influenced by a number of different factors. This idea can give you the chance to voice your own view, and reflect on how different elements have shaped your opinion on the topic.

You can consider a variety of different viewpoints, as well as the things that influence them, perhaps making use of recent news articles. The things that you may think about which have an impact on views on this issue could include:

• Whether you believe the benefits of this kind of research are worth the costs – do you have examples of where they are or aren’t?
• When you think embryos should be considered as human lives
• What other alternatives to this research are there?
• How does religion and other cultural/upbringing factors affect these views?

3. What determines someone’s inner moral compass?

How can you define a person’s moral compass? It is an ambiguous concept which can be defined in various ways, and has lots of potential influences. But what what is it? And what makes a persons moral compass good or bad?

You may want to consider how the idea of a moral compass has changed over time, and what this means for peoples behaviour.  A good place to start could be here  – this book should give you an overview of the history of morals.

4. Should the death penalty be brought back?

The death penalty has been a seemingly common punishment for crime in the past, but should its use have been removed? Is it’s use in other countries ethical? This idea is a great way to bring together a love for history as well as an interest in History. You could start your research by finding out more about the death penalty –  this book may be useful for that .

You could discuss:

• Is the death penalty fair for those accused of murder?
• How do you eliminate the problems of false convictions?
• What problems and benefits are there with bringing back the death penalty?
• Is it moral to kill even in response to a crime?

5. Should euthanasia be allowed in the UK?

Euthanasia is something which has been a controversial issue in the UK for a very long time. Should people have the choice to die? This is something that is a great ethical dilemma for a variety of reasons. You may want to consider discussing:

• The alternative help available for those who want to be euthanised
• What circumstances euthanasia should be allowed in
• What the moral issues euthanasia raises
• Does the fact that it is not allowed in the UK now mean that people don’t get euthanised? Or does it just mean that it is not fairly available?

6. How moral is intense animal farming?

Animal rights and whether animal farming is ethical is a hugely controversial, and easily debatable subject at the moment. There are many resources out there from animal rights organisations about the brutality and potential lack of morality surrounding animal farming.

You can use this available information to evaluate pre-existing views on the topic – perhaps a good book to start off your evaluation of this subject could be  ‘The end of animal farming..’ which can be found here .

This book   may also be a good starting point for a discussion-based project on the topic of the ethics of animal farming. This could make for a great EPQ, and your interpretation of evidence and conclusion would be really valuable.

7. Are society’s perceptions of what’s right and wrong based on Christianity?

Religion and its role in society is a really interesting topic to consider. Whatever religion you follow (or even if you don’t follow a religion), the impact of particular religions on what are considered to be basic, widely-held beliefs is something that is really great to discuss – perhaps more of your cultural upbringing has been influenced by religion than you thought!

There are already publications around this subject,  such as this book  which I would recommend to start your consideration of this subject. However, it is important that you approach this subject in a very analytical and evaluative way, as much of the literature in this area is likely to have a bias – identifying these limitations in your EPQ is also certainly a skill which you want to showcase!

8. Is it ethical to raise a child in a purely religious environment?

Religion and upbringing is also another really interesting relationship to explore. Religious beliefs tend to run in families – but should this be the case?

There are a variety of different ways that you could approach this question, though you may want to consider the following ideas in order to come to a judgement:

• Should children have a choice in the religion which they are following?
• From what age are children able to make this choice?
• Is stopping parents from making religion a big part of their children’s lives going against their religion and therefore a violation of their freewill?
• At what point does the amount of religion in a child’s environment too much?

9. Should we impose measures to control the global population?

The population has been growing and growing over the years, and is continuing to do so.  The world population is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050.  But what does this mean for us now? Are there actions which we should take to prevent a huge spike in the number of people in the global population?

For your EPQ, you may want to consider:

• The reasons for controls – is it ethical to let the population grow that much?
• Previous impositions of population control and the related ethical issues – were they successful? You could take a look at the one child policy in China (1979-2016), and  this book  may be an interesting, related read for you to start with .

10. How should we distribute the wealth that has been created by machines?

Machines taking over jobs is a concern for many, and perhaps this is partly because companies could make a lot more profit using machines which they don’t have to pay to carry out tasks which they would otherwise have to employ an individual to do.

However, the increasing use of machines in workplaces and other areas raises the question of where the money which has been essentially generated by machines should end up? Surely it is not ethical to simply give all of the money earned to big tech companies, and the companies who use their machines? Is there a way to distribute the wealth produced in a fair way which would be beneficial to society?

This is a very modern issue which presents new ethical issues, and is therefore incredibly interesting to discuss in your EPQ – your take on these issues (if presented in an effective way) could be your way to an A*.

11. How can the government stop criminals benefiting from natural disasters? 12. Should all animal testing be banned? 13. Does the government need to stop the production of plastic? 14. Are psychological research methods ethical? 15. Should prenatal scans be allowed? 16. Is the way we farm animals moral? 17. Is the population on its way to becoming vegan? 18. How is fast fashion affecting the climate? 19. Why does overfishing still occur? 20. Should we only be allowed to buy fruit and vegetables that are in season? 21. Is the tax system in the UK ethical? 22. Should the promise of patient confidentiality be trusted? 23. What are the different ways to consent? 24. Should women who incorrectly accuse men of rape be severely prosecuted? 25. Is it morally right to kill an embryo? 26. Charities and how they are not always ethical. 27. Why has lying become so common? 28. Why does torture still occur in the world? 29. The ethics surrounding war. 30. Why is slavery still going on? 31. Forced marriages and their impact on young women. 32. Is the idea of capitalism unethical? 33. Why does fraud occur so often? 34. Are people born racist or do they become racist? 35. How can we accept the LGBT community? 36. Is privacy online important? 37. Should we give AI the right to kill? 38. Should we create synthetic lifeforms? 39. Is it right to colonise other planets? 40. At what point do we start population control? 41. Is science destroying the planet? 42. The issues involved with organ transplants. 43. Should everyone receive free healthcare? 44. Should social media be banned? 45. Why are care homes run so poorly? 46. The impact of mental disorders on younger generations. 47. Are IVF treatments ethical? 48. What are the ethical implications involved with neuroscience? 49. The ethical issues surrounding hormone therapy. 50. Should we screen for genetic diseases in all cases? 51. Is it ethical to invest money in space exploration considering the state of our planet? 52. Do care homes provide adequate care to dementia patients? 53. Are homeless people to blame for their situation? 54. Should everyone receive a universal income for absolute necessities? 55. Is the use of corporate jargon ethical? 56. How many immigrants should wealthy countries accept? 57. Should immigrants have a right to claim benefits within the UK? 58. What is the ethical minimum wage? 59. The ethics surrounding employees stealing company time. 60. Is it unethical for countries to possess nuclear weapons? 61. How can we be sure to eradicate AI bias? 62. Is it right for humans to ever control AI? 63. Should we be allowed to edit our child’s genes before birth? 64. Do we have the right to terraform other planets? 65. Should we always respect a patient’s choice (even if it’s wrong)? 66. Should we introduce non-human DNA into our genome? 67. Should people be forced to die if ageing is ever cured? 68. At what point does an embryo or foetus become a human life? 69. Do embryos have rights? 70. Can only humans have rights?

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Foreign Languages

1. why do people speaking foreign languages sound like they are speaking fast.

If you have an interest in languages, you may have found that when you listen to other people speaking in a language which is not your native language seem to be speaking very fast! Perhaps you have wondered if this is something which is universal for everyone learning second languages, or whether it is just that certain languages are spoken more quickly than others.

You can look at some research to answer this question, and  this piece of research may be a good place to get you started .

This is a great idea for an EPQ, as it will be research based but also gives the opportunity for discussion.

2. What is the hardest language to learn?

The perception of the hardest language to learn is something which is very subjective and dependent on a number of different factors. You could consider this in terms of these factors. For example, you may want to narrow down your project by looking at:

• The hardest language for people from a specific country to learn
• The most complex language to learn in terms of grammatical and other skills
• The most difficult pronunciation
• The most and least spoken languages and their perceived difficulties

3. Do children learn particular languages faster?

This is a really interesting area to research. The idea that children learn languages quicker is widely accepted, but is this true for every language? Which languages are easier for children to learn overall?

You may want to consider discussing the things that can have an impact on a child’s ability to learn a language, including:

• Whether their parents speak the language
• How they learn the language (through books, tv, school etc)
• When they learn the language

These are all important factors to consider, and could lead to a more knowledgeable approach to teaching children second languages.

4. How much easier is it for children to learn a foreign language compared to an adult?

There is a generally widely-accepted view that children can learn languages more easily than adults. But to what extent is this true? There is a wide range of research done in this area, and it can lead to some interesting discussions about:

• What age is the best to introduce a second language to a child?
• Should all children be taught second languages?
• What are the best methods for teaching a second language to students?

This is an area where (if you were interested), you could put forward evidence-based views around the applications of the idea that languages are more easily learned by children.

5. Should everyone be forced to learn a foreign language at school?

This is another issue related to language and children. If the best time to learn a language is when you are a child, but many parents don’t speak more than 1 language, is it essential that children are taught languages from a young age? If so:

• What language should be taught as a compulsory subject?
• Between which ages should a language be taught to children?
• How should language abilities be applied in the rest of school life?
• How should the languages be taught?

The use and teaching of language in schools is another real debate topic, and gives you the chance to show off your debating skills and ability to interpret evidence to form an opinion. These are great skills to showcase for your EPQ.

6. Is Latin dead?

Latin is a classic language, which is not seen in modern society. However, it is still relevant. You may want to discuss a range of topics in an EPQ on this subject area. For example, you could consider:

• What are the benefits of learning Latin?
• Can knowledge of Latin make learning other languages easier?
• How has Latin influenced the languages which we speak today?

You could use the information you find on these topics to evaluate the status of Latin, and whether or not it should be considered to be a ‘dead’ language.

7. What makes French the world’s most romantic language?

French is widely recognised or considered as an incredibly romantic language. But was has led to this belief? Is it the way that the language sounds? Is it the culture found in France? Is it the landscape or the buildings (i.e. the physical environment)? Do French people find the language ‘romantic’?

If you are interested in language, doing a project about the preconceptions about a language such as French is a great way to go with your EPQ. You could consider discussing what makes the language ‘romantic’, as well as whether or not some of these specific elements are found in other languages.

8. How has English affected the German language?

The interaction between languages, and the influences that they have on each other is something that will give you the chance to look at a variety of different elements which would be very interesting to discuss in your project.

You could research the relationship between any 2 languages, and the things that you may want to consider include:

• The similarities between English and German
• The differences between English and German (you may want to look at  this book about English and German grammar )
• The reasons for similarities/differences – where are the languages derived from? Has there been any interaction between the formation of them?

9. Why is the internet dominated by the English language?

Around 20% of the world speak English , so why is it so commonly seen in media, such as on the internet? The domination of English as a language across the world is something that is incredibly interesting, especially as the number of English speakers is actually a lot lower than you would perhaps expect.

This is a great idea for an EPQ, because it gives you the chance to look at the prevalence of the English language, and how it’s used in the Inernet. You may want to consider:

• How the broad use of the English Language has affected the number of native English speakers who are bilingual.
• What language is the most commonly used across the world? Why is this?
• What has made media in English so highly available?

10. Why Google Translate doesn’t work sometimes

Google Translate is notorious for not working properly, and this is something that every language teacher warns their students to be wary of. But why does Google Translate not work?

There are so many different elements which go into speaking a language effectively, and these are things that you would be able to discuss in your essay.

• Differences in grammatical techniques
• Differences in meanings of particular words (or dual meanings)
• The context of sentences and its importance in terms of meaning

One of the great things about this subject is that you can apply it to any language, and therefore it can be relevant to both your A-Levels and perhaps even the degree which you would like to do.

11. What is the best way to learn a second language? 12. Should all parents aim to teach their children another language? 13. How useful is mandarin within the business world? 14. What are the psychological barriers to learning a new language? 15. Does listening to foreign music and films help with pronunciation? 16. How does language learning differ in other countries? 17. What are the benefits of being bilingual? 18. What language was Jesus believed to speak and is at all similar to modern-day language? 19. How helpful are language learning apps in becoming fluent in another language? 20. Should language teachers take on a more practical approach? 21. How have different dialects of the same language evolved? 22. What are the most similar languages to one another? 23. How does a language portray its origin country’s culture? 24. Is there a certain pattern for learning a language? 25. Does the way you learn a language effect your pronunciation? 26. Why does the German language seem aggressive and was it always that way? 27. Do teachers only teach ways to pass the exam and not learn languages in detail? 28. Are language examinations fair? 29. To what extent does it take intelligence or a good memory to learn a foreign language? 30. How has language learning changed throughout history? 31. Is it important to understand the culture of a language? 32. How accents can affect understanding dramatically. 33. How is motivation built to learn a second language? 34. How can you forget a language you were once fluent in? 35. Why is it so common to get anxiety when learning a new language? 36. What is the most common language found in music? 37. How difficult is it to learn sign language for a deaf person? 38. What are the origins of the English language? 39. The complications surrounding the Arabic language. 40. How do dyslexic people manage language learning? 41. Why do people still learn and use Latin, what is its value in modern society? 42. Are programming languages considered just as hard to learn as verbal languages? 43. Has “text talk” ruined the complexity of people’s vocabulary? 44. What is the best age to learn a new language? 45. Is it easier to learn a third language once you have already learnt two? 46. How difficult is language reading compared to speaking and listening? 47. How does grammar change with different languages? 48. The importance of cross-language communication. 49. Does language learning help bridge the intellectual inequality gap? 50. How do people pick up accents? 51. Why does the English language not have clear masculine and feminine classifications? 52. How do certain words evolve into insulting words over time? 53. How different are alphabets between languages? 54. What is the official process followed when adding words to a language? 55. What is the field of Mathematics dominated by the Greek language? 56. What was the first verbal language humans spoke? 57. Why has Latin become somewhat obsolete? 58. The origins of the Arabic language. 59. How strict are punctuation rules across different languages? 60. Which foreign language has the most dialects and why? 61. How has human language evolved over time? 62. Which world language conveys more information per word? 63. Which type of language conveys more information: verbal or body? 64. Why can some words not be translated between languages? 65. The origins of the Japanese language 66. How English is used in the Japanese media 67. Is it fair to say that china only has only a single language? 68. How have foreign immigrants integrated into Japanese society since WW2? 69. Is Japanese an isolated language or part of a broader language family? 70. Is how people use body language universal across the world?

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Biology

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To History

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Art

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Sport

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Architecture

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Computer Science

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Engineering

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Politics

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Chemistry

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Geography

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Physics

70+ EPQ Ideas Relating To Maths

I’m looking for ideas for an EPQ based on primary school teaching. Any suggestions?

i was wanting to do something using this topic, what did you do in the end? 🙂

To what extent to primary school teachers effect the personal development of children. Or how does the environment created by primary schools affect a child mental and cognitive development

it isn’t a primary school qualification

Should boys receive exclusive lessons on feminism in primary school? How can we teach primary school students about internet safety? How can we teach primary school students about their rights over their own bodies? Is the way we teach obesity in school harmful to overweight or obese children? Is the Education system indoctrinating students? The importance of girls in primary school having role models in STEM. Why banning mobile phones in school does more harm than good. Why our education system fails to pick up students with dyspraxia. Why we should allow students to move around the classroom as they …  Read more »

Do primary teachers have an impact on people’s morals even when they become adults?

Is primary school teaching restricting Young children?

I was thinking a maths and gambling based epq. Any suggestions?

theory of probability in casinos?

Would an essay about disabled rights be good idea for EPQ

I think that is a great topic to construct your EPQ about. Just ensure that you have enough to say about this topic.

anyone got any suggestions for a drama/theatre related artefact based EPQ????

shakespeares use of masquerade in his plays – like in romeo and juliet and linking it to the era it came from and its links to italy as well

write, direct and perform in a play- could be a parody of a Shakespeare play?- for mythology do a modern version of a classic myth?- link to a topic you are interested in

Any ideas on a travel based EPQ

maybe look at the impact of tourism on low income countries or CO2 emissions from travel

I live in cornwall and iIO what about how will covid 19 aefffect the tourisum industry (please ignore my spelling by back button is broke)

Do you go to Callywith (only school i know doing EPQ in Cornwall lol) ? Also have you decided on an EPQ yet because I have no idea

I’m struggling to think of a good EPQ question based on health care, the NHS or paramedics. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thankyou!

How the nhs negatively affected the uks economy, could the uk survive without the nhs, is the pay of nhs workers fair, how did COVID 19 effected the nhs and especially the workers, should the uk follow in the steps of other countries and have privatised health care, the history of the nhs and how it impacted the uk, will the nhs be around forever or will it collapse? Literally so many you can do with the nhs although I may have to combine different aspects to get enough content to write about, good luck !!!

hi im struggling to find an epq that would be linked to a diplomat career with international relations or law any help would be appreciated

should countries be allowed to sue each other

hello friends, im from portugal and would like a topic for my IPQ that relates to wine, does anyone got any ideas ?

hi everyone, i’m thinking of doing an epq based on interpretations of love and love languages, can anyone come up with a question for that? or would that not be a good route to take?

doing A-Level EPQ at sixth form and I do not know what to do for my EPQ and I don’t have a question. I have to link it to Religious Education as it is a catholic school. Do you have any recommendations. thanks

should RE be compulsory in school.

yikes I go to a catholic school and we don’t have to do that… should the uk be a secular society / is the world losing faith / can war be ethical / religious/ethical duty to protect the environment

Why are people so obsessed with religion, even to the point of killing and being killed for it, and is this obsession healthy?

I’m looking at medicine for Uni, do you think an EPQ about “can you die from a broken heart” is any good?

Looking for EPQ ideas in relation to the Armed Forces!! Any suggestions welcome, thanks

(^^)/ What about history of armed forces?

looking for an epq linking Applied science and Psychology together. Any ideas????

Hey what topic did u end up doing I’m interested in those 2 subjects too x

Hi! I’m looking to do an EPQ about genetics. Any ideas?

Hey everyone, I was thinking to do an EPQ based on the e-commerce. Any suggestions about it?

I’m struggling to think of any decent EPQ topics regarding music. Anyone got any ideas? 🙂

does music have an impact on the brain? does listening to music whilst revising help? is music a form of art? is music a form of therapy? why do people find comfort in music?

can I do Can physics prove evolution or any of the physics ideas if I already do physics a level or are they too similar?

any ideas on a media epq

Ideas for food based epq ideas that include making an artefact

are synthetic/man-made chemicals used for food processing and packaging, ethical ?

Hey I need to decide on my topic for my EPQ and I have 4 that I can’t choose between: To what extent will future development of genome sequencing and synthetic life impact the field of AI?

Could humanity ever achieve biological immortality?

What are the conditions required on a planet for intelligent life to evolve?

What if Pangea never broke apart?

Favourites?

I love the first two! im also thinking to do one something linked with computer science or biology/biomed

I’m interested in doing an epq to do with criminology does anyone have any suggestions for questions/topics?

im looking for an epq to do with maths and comp sci, any suggestions?

Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Travel and Tourism Industry — The History of Moscow City

The History of Moscow City

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Geography of Moscow, Russia

Learn 10 Facts About Russia's Capital City

• Urban Geography
• Physical Geography
• Political Geography
• Country Information
• Key Figures & Milestones
• M.A., Geography, California State University - East Bay
• B.A., English and Geography, California State University - Sacramento

Moscow is Russia's capital city and is the largest city in the country. As of January 1, 2010, Moscow's population was 10,562,099, which also makes it one of the top ten largest cities in the world. Because of its size, Moscow is one of the most influential cities in Russia and dominates the country in politics, economics, and culture among other things. Moscow is located in Russia's Central Federal District along the Moskva River and covers an area of 417.4 square miles (9,771 sq km).

The following is a list of ten things to know about Moscow: 1) In 1156 the first references to the construction of a wall around a growing city called Moscow began to appear in Russian documents as did descriptions of the city being attacked by the Mongols in the 13th century. Moscow was first made a capital city in 1327 when it was named the capital of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality. It later became known as the Grand Duchy of Moscow. 2) Throughout much of the rest of its history, Moscow was attacked by rival empires and armies. In the 17th century a large part of the city was damaged during citizen uprisings and in 1771 much of Moscow's population died due to the plague. Shortly thereafter in 1812, Moscow's citizens (called Muscovites) burned the city during Napoleon 's invasion. 3) After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Moscow became the capital of what would eventually become the Soviet Union in 1918. During World War II, however, a large portion of the city suffered damage from bombings. Following WWII, Moscow grew but instability continued in the city during the fall of the Soviet Union . Since then, though, Moscow has become more stable and is a growing economic and political center of Russia.

4) Today, Moscow is a highly organized city located on the banks of the Moskva River. It has 49 bridges crossing the river and a road system that radiates in rings out from the Kremlin in the city's center. 5) Moscow has a climate with humid and warm to hot summers and cold winters. The hottest months are June, July, and August while the coldest is January. The average high temperature for July is 74°F (23.2°C) and the average low for January is 13°F (-10.3°C). 6) The city of Moscow is governed by one mayor but it is also broken down into ten local administrative divisions called okrugs and 123 local districts. The ten okrugs radiate out around the central district which contains the city's historic center, Red Square, and the Kremlin. 7) Moscow is considered the center of Russian culture because of the presence of many different museums and theaters in the city. Moscow is home to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Moscow State Historical Museum. It is also home to Red Square which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site . 8) Moscow is well-known for its unique architecture which consists of many different historic buildings such as Saint Basil's Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Distinctive modern buildings are also beginning to be constructed throughout the city.

9) Moscow is considered one of the largest economies in Europe and its main industries include chemicals, food, textiles, energy production, software development, and furniture manufacturing. The city is also home to some of the world's largest companies. 10) In 1980, Moscow was the host of the Summer Olympics and thus has a variety of different sports venues that are still used by the many sports teams within the city. Ice hockey, tennis, and rugby are some popular Russian sports. Reference Wikipedia. (2010, March 31). "Moscow." Moscow- Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia . Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow

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Security Questions Emerge as First Charges Are Filed in Russia Attack

Russian officials formally charged four men in the attack, which killed at least 137 people at a Moscow-area concert hall on Friday. American officials blamed a branch of the Islamic State.

• Share full article

• A memorial outside the Crocus City Hall concert venue. Reuters
• People waiting to visit a memorial at Crocus City Hall. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• Leaving flowers outside the site of the attack. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• Mourners at a memorial in St. Petersburg, Russia. Anton Vaganov/Reuters
• Firefighters and rescuers clearing debris after the deadly attack. Reuters
• Police officers outside the Basmanny District Court in Moscow. Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated Press
• People waited to donate blood near Crocus City Hall on Saturday. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• A flag flying at half-staff as policemen guard the closed entrance to Red Square in Moscow. Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA, via Shutterstock
• A billboard on Saturday noted the date of the concert hall attack in Moscow. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times
• The Crocus City Hall concert venue in suburban Moscow after it was attacked Friday night. Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

Paul Sonne and Neil MacFarquhar

Here’s what to know about the attack.

Russian officials have brought charges against four men they said were responsible for a fiery terrorist attack on a suburban Moscow concert venue that killed at least 137 people last week.

Four men were arraigned late Sunday night on terrorism charges in the attack at Crocus City Hall, just outside the Russian capital. A court spokesman identified them as Dalerjon Mirzoyev, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, Shamsidin Fariduni and Muhammadsobir Fayzov, a 19-year-old who appeared in court in a wheelchair, according to Russian media outlets.

Mr. Mirzoyev, Mr. Rachabalizoda and Mr. Fariduni told the court they were from Tajikistan, and Russian media outlets reported that Mr. Fayzov was also from the Central Asian nation. All four had visible injuries; Mr. Rachabalizoda’s head was heavily bandaged and Mr. Fayzov had to be wheeled in and out of the courtroom.

Earlier Sunday — which had been declared a national day of mourning — people visited the scene of the attack to lay flowers and light candles at a memorial. Scores of people waited in a long line under a gray sky, many clutching red bouquets, as efforts were underway inside to dismantle the remains of the stage. Flags were lowered to half-staff at buildings across the country, and state media released a video of President Vladimir V. Putin lighting a memorial candle in a church.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law-enforcement body, said on Sunday that 137 bodies had been recovered from the charred premises, including those of three children. It said that 62 victims had been identified so far and that genetic testing was underway to identify the rest.

There are two primary narratives about the violence on Friday night, Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years . American officials say it was the work of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an Islamic State offshoot that has been active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran . But on Saturday, Mr. Putin did not mention ISIS in his first public remarks on the tragedy , and hinted at the possible involvement of Ukraine, which has issued a strong denial .

Here’s what to know:

The search for survivors ended on Saturday, as details about the victims began to emerge . Many of the more than 100 people wounded in the attack were in critical condition. The search for bodies continues.

As Russia mourned, the war in Ukraine continued. Ukraine’s air force said it had shot down 43 out of 57 Russian missiles and drones launched overnight against different parts of the country. And Ukraine’s military said it had struck two large landing ships that were part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. There was no immediate comment from Russia’s Defense Ministry.

Piknik, the Russian rock band that was to play a sold-out concert at the suburban venue on the night it was attacked and burned to rubble, now finds itself at the center of the tragedy .

The attack dealt a political blow to Mr. Putin , a leader for whom national security is paramount.

Neil MacFarquhar

Russia charges four people with terrorism after attack on concert hall.

The four men suspected of carrying out a bloody attack on a concert hall near Moscow, killing at least 137 people, were arraigned in a district court late Sunday and charged with committing a terrorist act.

The four, who were from Tajikistan but worked as migrant laborers in Russia, were remanded in custody until May 22, according to state and independent media outlets reporting from the proceedings, at Basmanny District Court. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The press service of the court only announced that the first two defendants, Dalerjon B. Mirzoyev and Saidakrami M. Rachalbalizoda, pleaded guilty to the charges. It did not specify any plea from the other two, Mediazona, an independent news outlet, reported.

The men looked severely battered and injured as each of them was brought into the courtroom separately. Videos of them being tortured and beaten while under interrogation circulated widely on Russian social media.

Muhammadsobir Z. Fayzov, a 19-year-old barber and the youngest of the men charged, was rolled into the courtroom from a hospital emergency room on a tall, orange wheelchair, attended by a doctor, the reports said. He sat propped up in the wheelchair inside the glass cage for defendants, wearing a catheter and an open hospital gown with his chest partially exposed. Often speaking in Tajik through a translator, he answered questions about his biography quietly and stammered, according to Mediazona.

Mr. Rachabalizoda, 30, had a large bandage hanging off the right side of his head where interrogators had sliced off a part of his ear and forced it into his mouth, the reports said, with the cutting captured in a video that spread online.

The judge allowed the press to witness only parts of the hearings, citing concerns that sensitive details about the investigation might be revealed or the lives of court workers put at risk. It is not an unusual ruling in Russia.

Russia’s Federal Security Services announced on Saturday that 11 people had been detained, including the four charged men, who were arrested after the car they were fleeing in was intercepted by the authorities 230 miles southwest of Moscow.

In the attack, on Friday night, four gunmen opened fire inside the hall just as a rock concert by the group Piknik was due to start. They also set off explosive devices that ignited the building and eventually caused its roof to collapse. Aside from the dead, there were 182 injured, and more than 100 remain hospitalized, according to the regional health ministry.

President Vladimir V. Putin used the fact that the highway where the men were detained leads to Ukraine to suggest that the attack was somehow linked to Ukraine’s war effort. But the United States has said repeatedly that the attack was the work of an extremist jihadi organization, the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility.

The first charged, Mr. Mirzoyev, who had a black eye and cuts and bruises all over his face, leaned for support against the glass wall of the court cage as the charge against him was read. Mr. Mirzoyev, 32, has four children and had a temporary residence permit in the southern Siberian city of Novosibirsk, but it had expired, the reports said.

Mr. Rachabalizoda, married with a child, said he was legally registered in Russia but did not remember where.

The fourth man charged, Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, married with an 8-month-old baby, worked in a factory producing parquet in the Russian city of Podolsk, just southwest of Moscow. He had also worked as a handyman in Krasnogorsk, the Moscow suburb where the attack took place at Crocus City Hall, at a concert venue within a sprawling shopping complex just outside the Moscow city limits.

The Islamic State has been able to recruit hundreds of adherents among migrant laborers from Central Asia in Russia who are often angry about the discrimination they frequently face.

Alina Lobzina , Paul Sonne and Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.

Maps and Diagrams of the Moscow Concert Hall Attack

The mass shooting and arson at a suburban Moscow concert venue, which killed more than 130, were attributed by U.S. officials to members of a branch of the Islamic State.

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The other two men charged in the attack are Shamsidin Fariduni, 26, and 19-year-old Muhammadsobir Fayzov, who appeared in court in a wheelchair. All four men who've been charged have been identified by a court spokesman on Telegram. They appeared separately before a judge on charges of committing a terrorist act and were remanded in custody until May 22.

Russian authorities have begun naming the suspects in the attack. The first two suspects have been identified as Dalerjon Mirzoyev and Saidakrami Rachabalizoda, according to state news agency RIA Novosti, which is reporting from the court. Both have been charged with committing a terrorist act and face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

RIA reported that Mirzoyev is a 32-year-old from Tajikistan who had an expired three-month permit to be in the southern Russian city of Novosibirsk. Less information was immediately released about Rachabalizoda, but state media reports said he was born in 1994.

Valerie Hopkins and Alina Lobzina

Concertgoers describe screams, smoke and stares of shock in a night of horror.

Once they heard the shots ring out on Friday night at Crocus City Hall, Efim Fidrya and his wife ran down to the building’s basement and hid with three others in a bathroom.

They listened as the gunfire began and thousands of people who had come to a sold-out rock concert on Moscow’s outskirts began screaming and trying to flee.

Horrified and scared, Mr. Fidrya did the only thing he could think to do: He held on tight to the bathroom door, which didn’t lock, trying to protect the group in case the assailants came to find them.

“While we could hear shooting and screaming, I stood the whole time holding the bathroom door shut,” Mr. Fidrya, an academic, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “The others were standing in the corner so that if someone started shooting through the door, they wouldn’t be in the line of fire.”

They didn’t know it then, but they were sheltering from what became Russia’s deadliest terror attack in two decades, after four gunmen had entered the popular concert venue and began shooting rapid-fire weapons.

Their story is one of many harrowing accounts that have emerged in the days since the attack, which killed at least 137 people. More than 100 injured people are hospitalized, some in critical condition, health officials said.

Mr. Fidrya’s small group waited and waited, but the attackers had started a fire in the complex and it was spreading. Mr. Fidrya’s wife, Olga, showed everyone how to wet their T-shirts and hold them to their faces so they could breathe without inhaling toxic smoke.

And then a second round of shots rang out.

After about half an hour, it was so smoky that Mr. Fidrya, 42, thought even the assailants must have left. As he ventured out, he saw the body of a dead woman lying by the escalator. Later he saw the body of another woman who had been killed in the carnage, her distraught husband standing over her.

His group went down into the parking garage and eventually emerged on the street as the emergency service workers were carrying victims from the building.

The Islamic State, through its news agency, claimed responsibility for the attack. U.S. officials said the assailants were believed to be part of ISIS-K, an Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan. On Saturday, Russia’s Federal Security Services announced that 11 people had been detained, including four who were arrested after the car they were fleeing in was intercepted by authorities 230 miles southwest of Moscow.

In interviews, survivors described how what started as a typical Friday night out devolved into a scene of panic and terror. The venue, which seated 6,200 people, had been sold out for a show by a veteran Russian band called Piknik.

Video footage from the scene shows the assailants shooting at the entrance to the concert venue, part of a sprawling, upscale complex of buildings that also includes a shopping mall and multiple exhibition halls. They then moved into the concert hall, where they sprayed gunfire as well, videos show.

The attackers also set the building on fire using a combination of explosives and flammable liquid, Russian authorities said.

Like the Fidryas, Tatyana Farafontova initially thought the sound of the shooting was part of the show.

“Five minutes before the show was supposed to start, we heard these dull claps,” she wrote on her VK social media page. Ms. Farafontova, 38, said in a direct message on Saturday that she was still in shock and was slurring her speech after the attack.

Then the claps got closer and someone shouted that there were attackers shooting. She scrambled onto the stage with the assistance of her husband.

“At the moment when we climbed onto the stage, three people entered the hall with machine guns,” she wrote in her VK account. “They shot at everything that moved. My husband from the stage saw bluish smoke filling the hall.”

Ms. Farafontova said that being on the center of the stage made her feel exposed and targeted.

“It felt as if they were poking me in the back with the muzzle of a machine gun,” she wrote, adding, “I could feel the breath of death right behind my shoulders.”

She crawled under the curtain and eventually followed the musicians, who had already started to flee, and ran as far as she could from the building.

Up on the balcony, Aleksandr Pyankov and his wife, Anna, heard the gunshots and lay on the floor for some time before joining others who jumped up and began running to the exit.

As they fled, they encountered a woman who had slumped down on an escalator and was blocking their route. She was alive but staring blankly ahead, Mr. Pyankov, a publishing executive, said. He told her to keep running, but then turned his head and saw what she was staring at.

“I started to look,” Mr. Pyankov, 51, said in a telephone interview. “And first I saw a murdered woman sitting on the sofa, and there was a young man lying next to her. I looked around and there were groups of bodies.”

It all happened in a matter of seconds, he said, and he tried to keep fleeing.

“The worst thing is that in this situation you’re not running away from the shooting, but toward it,” he said. “Because it was already clear that there would be a fire there, we know how it would burn. And you’re just running to figure out where else to run.”

Anastasiya Volkova lost both her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV, a state channel, that she had missed a call from her mother on Friday night at around the time of the assault. When she called back, there was no response, Ms. Volkova said.

“I couldn’t answer the phone. I didn’t hear the call,” Ms. Volkova told the broadcaster, adding that her mother had been “really looking forward to this concert.”

Accounts emerging about others who died in the assault also told tales of eager concertgoers who had made special efforts to get to the show.

Irina Okisheva and her husband, Pavel Okishev, traveled hundreds of miles — making their way from Kirov, northeast of Moscow. Mr. Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present, the newspaper Komsomolsaya Pravda reported. He did not live to celebrate his 35th birthday, which is this week. Both he and his wife died in the attack.

And Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamed about seeing Piknik , a heritage rock band that was playing the first of two sold-out concerts accompanied by a symphony orchestra.

Mr. Baklemyshev’s son told local media that his father had traveled solo from his hometown of Satka, some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, for the concert.

His son, Maksim, told the Russian news outlet MSK1 that his father had sent him a video of the concert hall before the attack. That was the last he had heard from him.

“There was no last conversation,” his son said. “All that was left is the video, and nothing more.”

Mr. Fidrya said he felt grateful to be alive, and that four of the assailants had been captured.

“Now there is confidence that the crime will be solved and those non-humans who organized and carried it out will be punished,” he said. “This really helps a lot.”

But images of the victims remain seared in his memory, in particular that of the husband, his back burned from the fire, standing over his dead wife outside the building as medics attended to the wounded.

The man was talking to Mr. Fidrya’s wife, Olga, saying they were from the city of Tver northwest of Moscow, had been together for 12 years and had three children.

“For us it’s all over, by and large,” Mr. Fidrya wrote in a message after the phone interview. “But for that guy who stood over the body of his wife, and for their three children, the worst is yet to come. And there are so many people like him there.”

Oleg Matsnev contributed reporting.

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement agency, released video of suspects being led, blindfolded, into its headquarters on Sunday. The agency said the investigation at the scene of the attack was continuing.

Ivan Nechepurenko

As questions about security failures swirl, Russian state media focus on a different narrative.

As Russia mourned the victims of the worst terrorist attack in the Moscow area in more than two decades on Sunday, differing narratives about the attack were spreading and taking hold in the country.

The attack late Friday on a concert hall near Moscow left at least 137 people dead and represented a significant security failure for the Kremlin. While the Russian authorities said they had arrested the four attackers, speculation over their identities and motivations was widespread. There also were open questions about whether Russia had adequately followed up on a warning from the United States about the threat of such an attack, and about how specific that warning was.

But most Russian commentators and state media devoted little time to those issues, instead pointing fingers elsewhere. The reaction reflected in part the state of anxiety that Russia has been living in since the start of the war in Ukraine, with propaganda outlets competing to advance one narrative, conspiracy theory or bit of speculation after another.

Many nationalist commentators and ultraconservative hawks on Sunday continued to push the idea that Ukraine was the obvious culprit, despite a claim of responsibility and mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State was responsible.

Hard-line anti-Kremlin activists speaking from abroad, meanwhile, speculated that the Russian state could have orchestrated the attack so that it could blame Ukraine or further tighten the screws inside the country.

Some lawmakers in Parliament argued that the government needed to get tough on migrants, after the authorities said that the four assailants were foreign citizens. Lawmakers also pledged to discuss whether capital punishment should be introduced in Russia.

“Different political forces are starting to use” the attack, said Aleksei Venediktov, a Russian journalist and commentator and the former editor of the influential Ekho Moskvy radio station. “The Kremlin, most of all,” he said in an interview broadcast on YouTube. “But others too, who say that it was all organized by the Kremlin.”

Some nationalist activists said that such a sense of disorientation could have been the attackers’ ultimate goal.

Yegor S. Kholmogorov, a Russian nationalist commentator, wrote in his blog on the Telegram messaging app that Russian society was “strongly united by the war and President Vladimir V. Putin’s victory in the election” before the attack.

But after the tragedy, he lamented on Sunday, Russia had turned into a “society that is split.”

Mr. Putin has done little to clear things up. On Saturday, he vowed to inflict “fair and inevitable” punishment on both the terrorists and the unknown forces behind them. Mr. Putin hinted that Ukraine was tied to the tragedy but stopped short of directly laying blame.

But many of Mr. Putin’s subordinates and public supporters appeared to have made up their minds about who was responsible.

Sergei A. Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst who often appears on Russian state television, wrote in a post on Telegram that Russia must work at isolating the Ukrainian leadership by “connecting the terrorist act not with ISIS, but with the Ukrainian government as much as possible.”

Russian state news outlets barely mentioned the claim of responsibility made by ISIS. United States officials have said the atrocity was the work of Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K, an offshoot of the group that has been active in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran.

Maria V. Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on Sunday that the West was pointing at ISIS in order to shift the blame away from Ukraine.

Russia has not presented any evidence of Ukraine’s involvement in the attack. Ukrainian officials have ridiculed the Russian accusations, and U.S. officials also have said there is no indication Kyiv played any role.

“There is no, whatsoever, any evidence — and, in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts responsible for what happened,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday when asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether the United States had evidence that Ukraine was connected to the concert hall attack.

Some commentators did criticize Russian security services for failing to prevent the tragedy. On Saturday, the state news agency Tass reported , citing a source in the Russian special services, that they had received a warning from the United States but that it was “broad, without any concrete information.”

Maggie Astor

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked on ABC’s “This Week” whether the United States had any evidence to back up Vladimir Putin’s hints that Ukraine was connected to the concert hall attack. “No,” she said. “There is no, whatsoever, any evidence — and, in fact, what we know to be the case is that ISIS-K is actually by all accounts responsible for what happened.”

Russia’s Investigative Committee, a top law enforcement agency, said 137 bodies have been recovered from the site of the attack, including those of three children. It said 62 victims had been identified and that genetic testing was being carried out on the remaining bodies to establish identities.

Jason Horowitz

Pope Francis offered prayers today “to the victims of the vile terrorist attack carried out the other night in Moscow,” telling the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome for Palm Sunday Mass that he hoped God would comfort and bring peace to their families and “convert the hearts of those who plan, organize and implement these unhuman acts.’”

He also prayed for all those suffering because of war: “Especially I think of martyred Ukraine, where many people find themselves without electricity because of the intense attacks against infrastructure, which, beyond causing death and suffering, bring about the risk of a human catastrophe of even greater dimensions."

Search and rescue workers are dismantling the remains of the stage at Crocus City Hall so that a giant crane can be brought in to clear debris from the collapse of the roof, the regional governor, Andrei Vorobyov, said on Telegram. Late last night, he said 133 bodies had been recovered from the scene of the attack, of which 50 have been identified. Another 107 injured people were in area hospitals, he said.

Matthew Mpoke Bigg

As the investigation into the Moscow attack continues, the war in Ukraine carries on. Ukraine's air force said it had shot down 43 out of 57 Russian missiles and drones launched overnight against different parts of the country. And Ukraine’s military said it had struck two large landing ships that were part of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. There was no immediate comment from Russia's defense ministry.

Crocus International, the company that owns the concert hall, vowed in a statement to restore everything that was destroyed during the terrorist attack. The cost of restoring the concert hall, one of the biggest and best-equipped in Moscow, will likely exceed $100 million, real estate experts told RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

The complex was developed by the Azerbaijan-born billionaire Aras Agalarov, whose son, Emin, is a famous pop star. Former President Donald Trump held the Miss Universe pageant at the same complex in 2013, and world-famous performers like Eric Clapton, Dua Lipa and Sia have also performed there.

Sunday is a national day of mourning in Russia. The state media is airing footage of flags flying at half-staff on government buildings and foreign embassies, and of people bringing flowers, candles and toys to spontaneous memorials across the country.

Alex Marshall

Piknik, a longtime Russian rock band, is now at the center of a tragedy.

Early Saturday, Piknik, one of Russia’s most popular heritage rock bands, published a message to its page on Vkontakte , one of the country’s largest social media sites: “We are deeply shocked by this terrible tragedy and mourn with you.”

The night before, the band was scheduled to play the first of two sold-out concerts, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, at Crocus City Hall in suburban Moscow. But before Piknik took the stage, four gunmen entered the vast venue, opened fire and murdered at least 133 people .

The victims appear to have included some of Piknik’s own team. On Saturday evening, another note appeared on the band’s Vkontakte page to say that the woman who ran the band’s merchandise stalls was missing.

“We are not ready to believe the worst,” the message said .

The attack at Crocus City Hall has brought renewed attention to Piknik, a band that has provided the soundtrack to the lives of many Russian rock fans for over four decades.

Ilya Kukulin, a cultural historian at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said in an interview that Piknik was one of the Soviet Union’s “monsters of rock,” with songs inspired by classic Western rock acts including David Bowie and a range of Russian styles.

Since releasing its debut album, 1982’s “Smoke,” Piknik — led by Edmund Shklyarsky, the band’s singer and guitarist — has grown in popularity despite its music being often gloomy with gothic lyrics. Kukulin attributed this partly to the group’s inventive stage shows.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kukulin said, the band began performing with exciting light displays, special effects and other innovative touches. At one point in the 1990s, the band’s concerts included a “living cello” — a woman with an amplified string stretched across her. Shklyarsky would play a solo on the string.

This month, the band debuted a new song online — “ Nothing, Fear Nothing ” — with a video that showed the band performing live before huge screens featuring ever-changing animations.

Unlike some of their peers, Piknik was “never a political band,” Kukulin said, although that did not stop it from becoming entwined in politics. In the 1980s, Soviet authorities banned the group — along with many others — from using recording studios, while Soviet newspapers complained of the group’s lyrics, including a song called “Opium Smoke” that authorities saw as encouraging drug use.

In recent years, some of Russia’s most prominent rock stars have left their country, fed up with President Vladimir V. Putin’s curbs on freedom of expression, including regular crackdowns on concerts. Piknik had benefited from that exodus, Kukulin said, because the band had fewer competitors on Russia’s heritage rock circuit.

Unlike some musicians, Shklyarsky had not acted as a booster for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kukulin said. Still, Ukrainian authorities have long banned Piknik from performing in the country because the group has played concerts in occupied Crimea. In a 2016 interview , Shklyarsky said he was not concerned about the ban.

“Politics comes and goes, but life remains,” he said.

Kukulin said that among Piknik’s songs was “ To the Memory of Innocent Victims ” — a track that could be interpreted as being about those who were politically oppressed under communism. Now, Kukulin said, many fans were hearing the song in a new way, as a tribute to those who lost their lives in Friday’s attack.

Anton Troianovski

news analysis

A deadly attack shatters Putin’s promise of security to the Russian people.

Less than a week ago, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia claimed a fifth term with his highest-ever share of the vote, using a stage-managed election to show the nation and the world that he was firmly in control.

Just days later came a searing counterpoint: His vaunted security apparatus failed to prevent Russia’s deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years.

The assault on Friday, which killed at least 133 people at a concert hall in suburban Moscow, was a blow to Mr. Putin’s aura as a leader for whom national security is paramount. That is especially true after two years of a war in Ukraine that he describes as key to Russia’s survival — and which he cast as his top priority after the election last Sunday.

“The election demonstrated a seemingly confident victory,” Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political scientist, said in a phone interview from Moscow. “And suddenly, against the backdrop of a confident victory, there’s this demonstrative humiliation.”

Mr. Putin seemed blindsided by the assault. It took him more than 19 hours to address the nation about the attack, the deadliest in Russia since the 2004 school siege in Beslan, in the country’s south, which claimed 334 lives. When he did, the Russian leader said nothing about the mounting evidence that a branch of the Islamic State committed the attack.

Instead, Mr. Putin hinted that Ukraine was behind the tragedy and said the assailants had acted “just like the Nazis,” who “once carried out massacres in the occupied territories” — evoking his frequent, false description of present-day Ukraine as being run by neo-Nazis.

“Our common duty now — our comrades at the front, all citizens of the country — is to be together in one formation,” Mr. Putin said at the end of a five-minute speech, trying to conflate the fight against terrorism with his invasion of Ukraine.

The question is how much of the Russian public will buy into his argument. They might ask whether Mr. Putin, with the invasion and his conflict with the West, truly has the country’s security interests at heart — or whether he is woefully forsaking them, as many of his opponents say he is.

The fact that Mr. Putin apparently ignored a warning from the United States about a potential terrorist attack is likely to deepen the skepticism. Instead of acting on the warnings and tightening security, he dismissed them as “provocative statements.”

“All this resembles outright blackmail and an intention to intimidate and destabilize our society,” Mr. Putin said on Tuesday in a speech to the F.S.B., Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, referring to the Western warnings. After the attack on Friday, some of his exiled critics have cited his response as evidence of the president’s detachment from Russia’s true security concerns.

Rather than keeping society safe from actual, violent terrorists, those critics say, Mr. Putin has directed his sprawling security services to pursue dissidents, journalists and anyone deemed a threat to the Kremlin’s definition of “traditional values.”

A case in point: Just hours before the attack, state media reported that the Russian authorities had added “the L.G.B.T. movement” to an official list of “terrorists and extremists”; Russia had already outlawed the gay rights movement last year. Terrorism was also among the many charges prosecutors leveled against Aleksei A. Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader who died last month .

“In a country in which counterterrorism special forces chase after online commenters,” Ruslan Leviev, an exiled Russian military analyst, wrote in a social media post on Saturday, “terrorists will always feel free.”

Even as the Islamic State repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attack and Ukraine denied any involvement, the Kremlin’s messengers pushed into overdrive to try to persuade the Russian public that this was merely a ruse.

Olga Skabeyeva, a state television host, wrote on Telegram that Ukrainian military intelligence had found assailants “who would look like ISIS. But this is no ISIS.” Margarita Simonyan, the editor of the state-run RT television network, wrote that reports of Islamic State responsibility amounted to a “basic sleight of hand” by the American news media.

On a prime-time television talk show on the state-run Channel 1, Russia’s best-known ultraconservative ideologue, Aleksandr Dugin, declared that Ukraine’s leadership and “their puppet masters in the Western intelligence services” had surely organized the attack.

It was an effort to “undermine trust in the president,” Mr. Dugin said, and it showed regular Russians that they had no choice but to unite behind Mr. Putin’s war against Ukraine.

Mr. Dugin’s daughter was killed in a car bombing near Moscow in 2022 that U.S. officials said was indeed authorized by parts of the Ukrainian government , but without American involvement.

U.S. officials have said there is no evidence of Ukrainian involvement in the concert hall attack, and Ukrainian officials ridiculed the Russian accusations. Andriy Yusov, a representative of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, said Mr. Putin’s claim that the attackers had fled toward Ukraine and intended to cross into it, with the help of the Ukrainian authorities, made no sense.

In recent months, Mr. Putin has appeared more confident than at any other point since he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russian forces have retaken the initiative on the front line, while Ukraine is struggling amid flagging Western support and a shortage of troops.

Inside Russia, the election — and its predetermined outcome — underscored Mr. Putin’s dominance over the nation’s politics.

Mr. Kynev, the political scientist, said he believed many Russians were now in “shock,” because “restoring order has always been Vladimir Putin’s calling card.”

Mr. Putin’s early years in power were marked by terrorist attacks, culminating in the Beslan school siege in 2004; he used those violent episodes to justify his rollback of political freedoms. Before Friday, the most recent mass-casualty terrorist attack in the capital region was a suicide bombing at an airport in Moscow in 2011 that killed 37 people.

Still, given the Kremlin’s efficacy in cracking down on dissent and the news media, Mr. Kynev predicted that the political consequences of the concert hall attack would be limited, as long as the violence was not repeated.

“To be honest,” he said, “our society has gotten used to keeping quiet about inconvenient topics.”

Constant Méheut contributed reporting.

There have been other deadly attacks at concerts and music festivals in recent years.

The attack before a sold-out rock concert near Moscow on Friday was the latest in a series of mass killings at concerts and music festivals around the world in recent years.

During the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel last year, Hamas targeted Tribe of Nova’s Supernova Sukkot Gathering , a dance music festival in Re’im, leaving at least 360 dead , according to the Israeli authorities. Gunmen surrounded the music festival at daybreak, killing and kidnapping attendees as others fled in their cars, only to find roads blocked and the event surrounded. “It was like a shooting range,” said Hila Fakliro, who was bartending around sunrise. Around 3,000 people had come to the event, timed to the end of the harvest holiday Sukkot.

In May 2017, a suicide bombing killed 22 people and injured hundreds more at an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in England. The assailant, a British citizen of Libyan descent, detonated explosives packed with nails, bolts and ball bearings moments after the performance ended, sending the crowd — filled with children and adolescent fans of the pop singer, who was then 23 — into a panic. Intelligence officials found that the bomber had previously traveled to Libya to meet with members of an Islamic State unit linked to terrorist attacks in Paris in 2015, which included an assault on a concert venue.

In November 2015, 90 people were killed at the Bataclan , a Paris music venue that holds 1,500, when three men armed with assault rifles and suicide vests stormed a concert by the California rock band Eagles of Death Metal. The musicians fled the stage as gunfire broke out, and attendees tried to hide from the assailants. A standoff with the police lasted more than two hours, with concertgoers held as hostages, ending when the police entered the club. One attacker was killed; two others detonated suicide vests. “Carnage,” one attendee posted on Facebook from inside the club. “Bodies everywhere.”

The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history took place at a music festival in October 2017, when a gunman fatally shot 60 people and injured hundreds more attending the Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas . The assailant had stockpiled 23 firearms in a 32nd-floor suite at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, opening fire from his window as Jason Aldean was onstage singing “When She Says Baby.” “It was just total chaos,” Melissa Ayala, who attended the festival with four friends, said. “People falling down and laying everywhere. We were trying to take cover and we had no idea where to go.” The F.B.I. concluded that the motive for the killings was unclear, but released files last year suggesting that the gunman, a gambler, was angry over casinos scaling back on perks. He had searched “biggest open air concert venues in USA” and reserved a hotel room overlooking the Lollapalooza festival in Chicago before settling on the Las Vegas event as his target.

The people killed at recent concerts and music festivals were commemorated earlier this year at the Grammy Awards . “Music must always be our safe space,” Harvey Mason Jr., the chief executive of the Recording Academy, which gives out the awards, said during the telecast. “When that’s violated, it strikes at the very core of who we are.”

Christina Goldbaum

The ISIS branch the U.S. blames for the attack has targeted the Taliban’s links with allies, including Russia.

The ISIS affiliate that American officials say was behind the deadly attack in Moscow is one of the last significant antagonists that the Taliban government faces in Afghanistan, and it has carried out repeated attacks there, including on the Russian Embassy, in recent years.

That branch of ISIS — known as the Islamic State Khorasan or ISIS-K — has portrayed itself as the primary rival to the Taliban, who it says have not implemented true Shariah law since seizing power in 2021. It has sought to undermine the Taliban’s relationships with regional allies and portray the government as unable to provide security in the country, experts say.

In 2022, ISIS-K carried out attacks on the Russian and Pakistani embassies in Kabul and a hotel that was home to many Chinese nationals. More recently, it has also threatened attacks against the Chinese, Indian and Iranian embassies in Afghanistan and has released a flood of anti-Russian propaganda.

It has also struck outside Afghanistan. In January, ISIS-K carried out twin bombings in Iran that killed scores and wounded hundreds of others at a memorial service for Iran’s former top general, Qassim Suleimani, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike four years before.

In recent months, the Taliban’s relationship with Russia, as well as China and Iran, has warmed up. While no country has officially recognized the Taliban government, earlier this month Russia accepted a military attaché from the Taliban in Moscow, while China officially accepted a Taliban ambassador to the country. Both moves were seen as confidence-building measures with Taliban authorities.

ISIS-K has both denounced the Kremlin for its interventions in Syria and condemned the Taliban for engaging with Russian authorities decades after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.

Its propaganda has painted the Taliban as “betraying the history of Afghanistan and betraying their religion by making friends with their former enemies,” said Ricardo Valle, the director of research of the Khorasan Diary, a research platform based in Islamabad.

In the more than two years since they took over in Afghanistan, Taliban security forces have conducted a ruthless campaign to try to eliminate ISIS-K and have successfully prevented the group from seizing territory within Afghanistan. Last year, Taliban security forces killed at least eight ISIS-K leaders, according to American officials, and pushed many other fighters into neighboring Pakistan .

Still, ISIS-K has proved resilient and remained active across Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Within Afghanistan, it has targeted Taliban security forces in hit-and-run attacks and — as it came under increasing pressure from Taliban counterterrorism operations — staged headline-grabbing attacks across the country. Just a day before the attack at the concert hall in Moscow, the group carried out a suicide bombing in Kandahar — the birthplace of the Taliban movement — sending a powerful message that even Taliban soldiers in the group’s heartland were not safe.

After the attack in Moscow, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s foreign ministry, said in a statement on social media that the country “condemns in the strongest terms the recent terrorist attack in Moscow” and “considers it a blatant violation of all human standards.”

“Regional countries must take a coordinated, clear and resolute position against such incidents directed at regional de-stabilization,” he added.

Oleg Matsnev

Names of the victims are beginning to emerge.

As emergency services combed the scene of the attack on a concert hall in Moscow, details on some of the victims began to emerge from officials and local news media.

Most of those identified so far appeared to be in their 40s, and many had traveled from other parts of the country to attend the concert where Piknik, a Russian rock band formed in the late 1970s, was slated to perform on Friday night.

Alexander Baklemyshev, 51, had long dreamed about seeing the band, his son told local media , and had traveled solo from his home city of Satka, some 1,000 miles east of Moscow, for the concert.

His son, Maksim, told the Russian news outlet MSK1 that his father had sent him a video of the concert hall before the attack. That was the last he heard from his father.

Irina Okisheva and her husband, Pavel Okishev, also traveled hundreds of miles to attend the concert — making their way from Kirov, northeast of Moscow. Mr. Okishev had received the tickets as an early birthday present. He was set to turn 35 next week, the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper reported. Both he and his wife died in the attack, the paper reported.

“Very painful and scary,” Ms. Okisheva’s colleagues wrote on a social media page for a photo studio where she worked. “The whole studio team is horrified by what happened.”

Anastasiya Volkova lost both of her parents in the attack. She told 5 TV that she had missed a call from her mother on Friday night at around the time of the attack. When she called back, there was no response, Ms. Volkova said.

As the death toll climbed to 133 people, the Moscow region’s health care ministry published a preliminary list of victims . It had 41 names; Andrey Rudnitsky was one of them.

A forward in an amateur hockey league, he turned 39 years old last week, according to his page on the league’s website. Mr. Rudnitsky’s teammates told Pro Gorod , a local news website, that he had moved to Moscow last year from Yaroslavl but planned to return home to play there. Mr. Rudnitsky had two children.

Ekaterina Novoselova, 42, was also on the list. Ms. Novoselova won a beauty pageant in 2001 in her home city of Tver, 110 miles northwest of Moscow, one of the pageant organizer’s told the local news outlet TIA . It reported that she had moved to Moscow to work as a lawyer and is survived by her husband and two children.

Some people appeared to have been named by mistake. Yevgeniya Ryumina, 38, told Komsomolskaya Pravda that she had fled the concert hall to safety. But she had lost her ID, Ms. Ryumina said, suggesting that might have led to the confusion.

This is what we know about the attack.

An attack Friday at a popular concert venue near Moscow killed 137 people, the deadliest act of terrorism the Russian capital region has seen in more than a decade.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack; American officials have attributed it to ISIS-K, a branch of the group.

Russian officials and state media have largely ignored ISIS’s claim of responsibility and instead suggested that Ukraine was behind the violence. Ukraine has denied any involvement, and American officials say there is no evidence connecting Kyiv to the attack.

Russian authorities have detained at least 11 people, including four migrant laborers described as Tajik citizens who have been charged with committing a terrorist act, but they have not identified most of the accused assailants or their motives.

Here’s a closer look at the attack.

What happened?

The gunmen entered the Crocus City Hall building, one of the biggest entertainment complexes in the Moscow area, with capacity of more than 6,000, shortly before a sold-out rock concert was scheduled to start. Armed with automatic rifles, they began shooting.

Using explosives and flammable liquids, Russian investigators said, they set the building ablaze, causing chaos as people began to run. The fire quickly engulfed more than a third of the building, spreading smoke and causing parts of the roof to collapse. Russia’s emergency service posted a video and pictures from after the fire showing charred seating and firefighters working to remove debris.

Russian law enforcement said that people had died from gunshot wounds and poisoning from the smoke.

At least three helicopters were dispatched to extinguish the fire or to try to rescue people from the roof. The firefighters were only able to contain the fire early on Saturday; the emergency service said it was mostly extinguished by 5 a.m.

The search for survivors ended on Saturday, as details about the victims began to emerge. Many of the more than 100 people injured in the attack were in critical condition.

Where are the assailants?

Attackers were able to flee the scene. Early on Saturday, the head of Russia’s top security agency, the F.S.B., said that 11 people had been detained in the connection to the attack, including “all four terrorists directly involved.” The four men were arraigned late Sunday and charged with committing a terrorist act, according to state and independent media outlets, and they face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The press service of the Basmanny District Court said that the first two defendants, Dalerjon B. Mirzoyev and Saidakrami M. Rachalbalizoda, had pleaded guilty to the charges.

It did not specify any plea from the other two — Muhammadsobir Z. Fayzov, a 19-year-old barber and the youngest of the men charged, and Shamsidin Fariduni, 25, a married factory worker with an 8-month-old baby — according to Mediazona, an independent news outlet.

The men looked severely battered and injured as they appeared in court, and videos of them being tortured and beaten while under interrogation circulated widely on Russian social media.

There were signs that Russia would try to pin blame on Ukraine, despite the claim of responsibility by the Islamic State. The F.S.B. said in a statement that the attack had been carefully planned and that the terrorists had tried to flee toward Ukraine.

How are Russians responding?

President Vladimir V. Putin, who claimed victory in a presidential election last weekend, did not publicly address the tragedy until Saturday afternoon. In a five-minute address to the nation, he appeared to be laying the groundwork to blame Ukraine for the attack, claiming that “the Ukrainian side” had “prepared a window” for the attackers to cross the border from Russia into Ukraine.

But he did not definitively assign blame, saying that those responsible would be punished, “whoever they may be, whoever may have sent them.”

The attack has punctured the sense of relative safety for Muscovites over the past decade, bringing back memories of attacks that shadowed life in the Russian capital in the 2000s.

Russia observed a national day of mourning on Sunday as questions lingered about the identities and motives of the perpetrators. Flags were lowered to half-staff at buildings across the country.

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.