Posted on 07/02/2008 8:28:14 PM PDT by Uncle Ralph
ANOTHER GROSS FACTUAL ERROR AT THE SUPREME COURT. Following up on similar huge errors from Justice Stevens in Heller. Plus, another Stevens Heller error here. What gives?
Sounds like the clerks didn't do their homework. JMHO.
The Constitution say that “the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact . . .” I don’t think the framers had in mind that they invent their own facts.
This citation should be used to pound the liberals. In this case they attempt to limit the second amendment to acts of Congress. In 1st amendment cases, they extend the restriction to any government entity.
Note that the 1st amendment specifically states the restriction “Congress shall make no law...”. The second amendment makes no reference to Congress. Yet the liberals would apply the 1st amendment to libraries, firehouses and public squares. The second amendment they attempt to restrict to acts of Congress only.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse, Justice Kennedy...
Stevens believes that states have right to ignore the constitution?
I'm not exactly sure what you might be referring to, but I have read that -- strictly speaking -- the Heller decision pertained to 2nd Amendment and (the Federally administered) D.C., and that it would take a decision regarding the 14th Amendment to make the states comply with the ruling. That may be what you are seeing reflected in the text.
Whaddyathink?
A real possibility for the Chief Justice and the 3 others on the right if the Dems get more seats in the Senate after November.
Question: Is there any way an Supreme Court decision can be rescinded and the case retried because of an error like this?
Other courts have thrown out trials and lawsuits for technical errors, why not the same for the SC?
Interesting comments at source. Thanks for posting.
Beyond Stevens, the 4 appointees so derelict in their duty to uphold the inalienable right to your life and its necessary corollary...the right to defend your life...in the least, should be removed from their positions.
Minimally, ABSOLUTELY!
To what court would you appeal. Trial and procedural errors are the cause for retrials and resubmissions when directed by a higher court. As the Constitution places SCOTUS at the top of the judicial food chain I see no avenue of appeal.
Of course that would be outrageously frivolous, whereas in this case, Kennedy had blatantly ignored due diligence in a gross error. Not only is he guilty of negligence in the performance of his office, but in calling capital punishment for child rape unconstitutional because its contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” he's committed judicial heresy in that he's overridden the language and intent of the Constitution and inserted his own moral assessments and legal inventions (capital crime is spoken of and not prohibited in Amendment V).
This should be well described as an absence of good behavior and therefore render him quantifiably eligible for impeachment.
There’s lots more than that ... seems like Scalia was pointing out an error of Stevens or Breyer on just about every page of his Heller opinion. Made them look like a couple of 9th Circus hacks.
What Justice Kennedy stated was that the death penalty is not available for a child rapist under federal law. If one considers only non-military federal law, that statement is correct. But there is such a provision in the UCMJ.
The reason why this oversight is not critical is that the case that was being decided was a civilian one and it clearly depended on the justices' interpretation of the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment.
As is well known, the military justice system has, generally for good reason, features that wouldn't pass the same degree of constitutional muster that the civilian system is subject to. So Kennedy's missed detail about the UCMJ provision could legitimately be considered incidental to the case at bar.
Nonetheless, all factual errors in SCOTUS opinions - even if a clerk is utimately to blame for slipshod research - detract from the public's confidence in the SCOTUS' decisions.
As for Stevens' factual errors, could it be his age?
I would have to disagree with that idea in this particular case, because I think that the factual error was was irrelevant to Kennedy's decision, whether one agrees with his ultimate conclusion or not.
If you say "Separation of Church and State" enough times, someone is liable to think its actually in the Constitution!
Well, at least they didn’t cite any foreign precedents in these decisions!
Well, to be fair, even if Stevens’ clerks are among the small number of smart liberals, and I’m sure they must be to be clerking for SCOTUS, their job is a lot harder than trying to find historical and logical basis for a correct opinion. Maybe the lefty justices should hire sleight-of-hand artists as clerks instead of lawyers.
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