Tuesday, March 01, 2005
Kennedy Prevails, Scalia Throws Fit (Again)
BREAKING NEWS: The United States Supreme Court ruled today (Tuesday March 1) that imposing the death penalty on individuals for crimes committed while they were juveniles (under 18) is unconstitutional! As a long stand opponent of the death penalty (member of Amnesty International since 1989) I am thrilled by this news. I'm also thrilled that it was a 5-4 majority opinion written for the Court by (soon-to-be-Chief?) Justice Kennedy with a scathing dissent by Scalia (joined by Thomas and Rehnquist), which he read from the bench. O'Connor dissented separately. What's important about this is two-fold: 1) Scalia could not (or would not) regulate his feeling about the case and thus pissed off O'Connor enough to have her not join his dissent written for the "Troglodyte Trio" (RehnquistScaliaThomas--a 3-headed beast, like Cerberus of yore) and 2) when Scalia reads his dissents from the bench he is inevitably ostentatiously wrong (see Romer vs Evans and Lawrence vs Texas).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
LinkWithin
3 comments:
It's gratifying to find others who understand the greater moral significance of this. This isn't just another ruling.
Proportionality is the PointWhile a lot of focus has been on the international trend away from allowing the death penalty in general, and for younger offenders even more broadly, the point of exempting juvenile offenders from the possibility of being sentenced to death isn't that times have changed, but that it's the right thing to do.
Is it just me, or does Scalia seem poised for a nervous breakdown? He appears increasingly agitated with anyone who dares question his supreme intellectual (near supernatural) powers to divine the will of the Creator, er, Founding Fathers... even if that person is SCOTUS colleague.
We're about two cases away from him showing up with white robes and a halo fashioned out of a wire hanger and silver glitter. I swear, one day soon his head's going to explode.
And what's the deal with Thomas? I mean, does he do anything? He's like the guy who can't decide what to order in a restaurant, so he just looks to waiter and says "What do you recommend... Yeah, I'll have that."
Thanks for the cool comments, guys! Don't get me started on Clarence Thomas, see my previous MyDD post on the topic on MLK Day.
Post a Comment