The latest Supreme Court Ruling on the death penalty is absolutely nuts. If we as a society deem that the death penalty is something that is going to exist then forcing 18 states to change their laws to accomodate the feeling of the justices is plain wrong. Don't make the mistake of thinking this is justified by the law. This court decided it felt that the death penalty for 16 & 17 year olds wasn't right so they made up a flimsy case to change it.
Over on The Volokh Conspiracy Orin Kerr starts off his commentary as follows.
Roper v. Simmons and Capital Litigation: I have just finished working my way through the opinions in Roper v. Simmons. As someone who greatly values stare decisis, I was disappointed by Justice Kennedy's majority opinion. There just isn't much there to justify overruling a 16-year-old precedent and striking down 18 state laws. I'm not sure about the juvenile death penalty as a matter of policy, but I found Justice Scalia's powerful dissent pretty tough to refute as a matter of constitutional law. Read the whole article.
0 comments:
Post a Comment