"(Our) peculiar institution" was a euphemism for slavery and the economic ramifications of it in the American South. The meaning of "peculiar" in this expression is "one's own", that is, referring to something distinctive to or characteristic of a particular place or people. The proper use of the expression is always as a possessive, e.g., "our peculiar institution" or "the South's peculiar institution". It was in popular use during the first half of the 19th century, especially in legislative bodies, as the word slavery was deemed "improper," and was actually banned in certain areas.

Some see this expression as specifically intended to gloss over the apparent contradiction between legalized slavery and the statement in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal". But, in fact, at the time this expression became popular, it was used in association with a vigorous defense of this institution as a good thing. One of the leaders in using the phrase, and in advancing the argument that slavery was a "positive good", establishing the proper relation between the races, was John C. Calhoun, most notably in his Speech on the Reception of Abolition Petitions. The March 1861 "Cornerstone Speech" of Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens even argued that Jefferson's words in the Declaration were mistaken, and that the Confederacy's new Constitution, establishing "our peculiar institution", had rectified the error.

David Garland is Arthur T. Vanderbilt Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology at New York University.

Born in Dundee, Scotland in 1955, he attended Rosebank Primary School and Harris Academy. In 1977 he graduated from the University of Edinburgh School of Law with an LLB and, the following year, from Sheffield University with a postgraduate MA in Criminology. He obtained his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in Socio-Legal Studies in 1984. From 1979 until 1997 he taught at the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Law and Society where he held a personal Chair in Penology. He has held visiting positions at Leuven University, Belgium and the University of California, Berkeley; was a Davis Fellow in Princeton University’s history department, and was a Visiting Global Professor in NYU Law School’s Global Law program. In 2009 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Free University of Brussels.

Garland was the founding editor of the international, interdisciplinary journal Punishment & Society. He edited the collection Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences (2001) and, with Richard Sparks, he co-edited Criminology and Social Theory (2000). He is the author of an award-winning series of books on punishment and social control - Punishment and Welfare: A History of Penal Strategies (1985), Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory (1990); The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society (2001) and Peculiar Institution: America's Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition(2010) - as well as a number of articles on the history and character of criminology. In addition, he has written on such topics as postmodernism, governmentality, risk, moral panics, and the concept of culture.

Andrew Paolo Napolitano (born June 6, 1950) is a former New Jersey Superior Court Judge. He is a political and senior judicial analyst for Fox News Channel, commenting on legal news and trials. Napolitano started on the channel in 1998.

Napolitano was born in Newark, New Jersey. He is a graduate of Princeton University (he was a founding member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton) and Notre Dame Law School. Napolitano sat on the New Jersey bench from 1987 to 1995, becoming the state's youngest then-sitting Superior Court judge. He also served as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University School of Law for 11 years. Napolitano resigned his judgeship in 1995 to pursue his writing and television career.

Prior to joining Fox as a news analyst, Napolitano was the presiding judge on the television show, Power of Attorney, in which people brought small-claims disputes to a televised courtroom. Differing from similar formats, the plaintiffs and defendants were represented "pro bono" by famous attorneys. The show ran in syndication during the 2000–2001 season.