In their provocative and urgent reflection, Austin Sarat and Steve Kramer confront what they view as one of the most dire questions for America today: what happens the spectacle of a public assassination becomes another battleground for opinion and outrage? In “After the Death of Charlie Kirk, America Needs to Take a Pause,” they examine the violent death of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk not merely as an isolated tragedy, but as a moment pregnant with national significance. Drawing on historical analogies, social media analysis, and a hard-eyed reading of our polarized public sphere, they call on Americans to resist the accelerating drift from deliberation to reaction, from democracy to demonization.
Sarat, a scholar of jurisprudence and political life, and Kramer, a seasoned legal practitioner, bring complementary lenses to this inquiry. For them, the more pressing danger is not just that a life was lost, but that the social response, rushed judgments, political exploitation, binary narratives, may deepen fractures in a democracy already saturated with distrust. Their central claim is if we fail to slow down, to “take a pause,” we risk letting the crowd, and the algorithm, decide not only the meaning of death but the future of public life. In their posting in JUSTIA/VERDICT, Sarat and Kramer unpack the patterns of reaction, the structural forces amplifying them, and the modest but essential act of collective restraint they urge in response.
To see Sarat and Kramer’s complete posting in JUSTIA/VERDICT, click here.
