The basic argument which was advocated frequently roots in retribution, namely, the argument “an eye for an eye”. The concept that guilty people deserve to be punished in proportion to the severity of their crime cannot be denied. However, it does not mean that death penalty is the only way to be imposed on the murderer. An eye for an eye is helpless for restorative justice. Life is independent absolutely and non-retroactive so that no victim can resuscitate even if the murderer is executed. The idea of restorative justice is to institutionalize peaceful and objective approaches which preserve the safety and dignity of all to solve problems and violations of law so as to balance the needs of the victim, wrongdoer and community. Obviously, capital punishment does not conform to that idea.

Some people may ask: “what about the victims if the death penalty would be abolished?” Something must be clarified that death penalty is just a kind of penalties not the only way to protect the victims and their families. Death penalty abolishment is not identified with victims' protection abandonment. Victims and their families can seek to remedy through legal proceedings, and that is the reason why the justice system exists, i.e. to protect victims and redress illegal acts.

Another common argument supporting capital punishment is deterrence, that is, by executing convicted murderers will deter would-be murderers from killing people. I think that this argument established an improper link between capital punishment and criminal probability. It is incredible that a perpetrator gives up committing a crime as result of thinking about the capital punishment. Crimes usually were committed in such an emotional state that the perpetrator did not think about the possible consequences.

There are more and more arguments which make the issue that whether capital punishment should be abolished or not much more complex. Most of those arguments view this issue of human being from a standpoint of relativism so that the debate is becoming increasingly severe and hardly cease.

How about thinking from a point which is more plain and connected with the value of a human being merely? To treat everyone as an individual who has his or her own particular character no matter who he or she is or what he or she done, perhaps, will make thing easier. The human being is the subject in the world not the object, so the fact of survival itself has its worth. As what I have learned, there are three elements of basic minimum content with respect to human dignity, which explain that life is absolute, and that no one can judge the value of existence of others. The first one is that every human being possesses an intrinsic worth, merely by being human, and the second one calls to respect others' intrinsic worth. Therefore, the life of a criminal could not be deprived by any reason also even though the criminal had killed somebody. It seems that there is no deed to discuss the question arising from relativism such as an eye for an eye anymore. Of course, we cannot deny that the criminal has to take the legal responsibility, but not by the way of life deprivation.

Some people argued that the moratorium on executions was illegal as a result that capital punishment had not been abolished in Taiwan after all, and, therefore, executions complied with administrative law principle. This argument confined the interpretation of the meaning of the word— law to national positive law. However, the consequence of interpretation in that way is that anything, even inhuman act, could be justified by legislation. We emphasize that we live in a rule-of –law society but have no idea to distinguish rule of law from rule by law. The purpose of rule of law is to prevent the government from being arbitrary, so the law must have objective and universal features, but legislation in majority whose democratic legitimacy is often challenged has not been sufficient to ensure these features. In the civilization, the only objective and universal value is human rights. Law without conforming to human rights will lose its legitimacy. It is unreasonable that our society had no consensus on human rights but proclaimed civilization ourselves, not to mention the fact that two international human rights covenants have been incorporated into domestic law in April, 2009.

People in Taiwan seem to believe that majority represents the whole democracy, and the community is used to solve problems by resorting to the mainstream of public opinion. Nevertheless, human rights issues, especially as to human life, are no purely public topics which can be settled by referendum or polls. The statement that Taiwan needs some more time to abolish the death penalty would become an excuse to evade the issue if we did nothing actively to face human rights.