Posted on 03/01/2005 10:40:45 AM PST by OXENinFLA
Justice Scalia, with whom The Chief Justice and Justice Thomas join, dissenting.
In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power to nullify laws enacted by the people's representatives, Alexander Hamilton assured the citizens of New York that there was little risk in this, since "[t]he judiciary ... ha[s] neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment." The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). But Hamilton had in mind a traditional judiciary, "bound down by strict rules and precedents which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them." Id., at 471. Bound down, indeed. What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years--not, mind you, that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to "the evolving standards of decency," ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted), of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists. Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: "[I]n the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment." Ante, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards--and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent.
Who sold him? Sununu.
Souter is who tips that balance to 5-4, every time, for the left. I don't like Breyer, Kennedy should be impeached, and O'Connor's an idiot. But John Sununu should have been ostracized by the GOP when it became apparent what a bill of goods he sold the Bush family. Instead we have the RNC electing his son and coddling daddy Sununu. Payback? Hardly. The Rino National Committee seems unconcerned.
Ha. He could be a poster boy of those in favor of executing extremely depraved, barely underage murderers.
Purportedly he even bragged that he'd get away with it beforehand because he was a minor. That statement right there should put him in the running.
He's not a child. He's not a young man. He is a monster.
And this is the case that the Supreme Court has decided to overturn over half of the State's law.
This is a travesty.
They charge teenagers more for insurance, should't they pay more for crime?
Excellent Counselor!
I pray to God that this great man becomes Chief Justice.
Worse still, the particular "mutt" who was the subject of this disastrous SCOTUS "decision" openly boasted, before he committed his crime, to his friends, "I can't be executed, because I'm a juvenile". The SCOTUS, in their oh-so-infinite wisdom, proved this joker right, and his victim, a woman bound and duct-taped to a chair, then thrown alive from a bridge into a river to drown, has been forgotten...
the infowarrior
The above is an assumtion, and as many assumptions may not necessarily be valid. You can be no more certain that any, or indeed, all "youthful offenders" who were sentenced to death by juries of their peers for particularly heinous crimes will spend their libves incarcerated than you can be certain of winning a lottery jackpot. The same forces (and faces) who strove to keep them from a date with an executioner, will at some time in the not too distant future, be requesting, nay even demanding, parole. This is a given...
the infowarrior
bump
Bears repeating.
bttt
But those other differences are mostly differences determined by state legislatures, and reflect differing judgments at different times and in different places. Regardless of how one feels about the imposition of the death penalty for <18 year olds, the matter is one for state legislatures, or the people of the several states through various extra legislative methods, to determine. It's not something for a bare majority of old geezers in black robes to decide for everyone.
Notice that even Justice O'Connor in her dissent says that the Constitution can be changed by methods other than the amendment process. She just doesn't think that that a "consensus" has formed over this issue. A very dangerous idea that is, but it is accepted by *at least* six of the nine Justices. If such a nationwide consensus had formed, there would be no problem in getting state laws and/or Constitutions changed to reflect it.
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