From Alan Dershowitz via Economist trying to explain the dissenting opinion issued by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in the case of Troy Davis.:
"Let us be clear precisely what this means. If a defendant were convicted, after a constitutionally unflawed trial, of murdering his wife, and then came to the Supreme Court with his very much alive wife at his side, and sought a new trial based on newly discovered evidence (namely that his wife was alive), these two justices would tell him, in effect: “Look, your wife may be alive as a matter of fact, but as a matter of constitutional law, she’s dead, and as for you, Mr. Innocent Defendant, you’re dead, too, since there is no constitutional right not to be executed merely because you’re innocent."
From Economist:
"...Mr Davis is on death row for murdering an off-duty police officer named Mark MacPhail 20 years ago. Seven of the nine eyewitnesses who fingered Mr Davis have since recanted their testimony. Many now say they were coerced by police and that the real killer is Sylvester Coles. Mr MacPhail was trying to get Mr Coles to stop harassing a homeless man at the time of the incident. Mr Coles also happens to be one of the witnesses who fingered Mr Davis.
Is Mr Davis innocent? That's not the right question. Does his potential innocence matter? Not to Justice Scalia, who wrote, "This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent." Thankfully, a majority of the court was more empathetic, ruling that Mr Davis deserves a new hearing. In an opinion joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the "substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing." Indeed."
TW: Conservatives when convenient speak of strict constructionism as a legal tenet. I am not sure if Scalia and Thomas went off the rails in pursuit of some warped sense of constructionism or if they just want anyone with the slightest possibility of guilt to fry.
Showing posts with label Sonia Sotomayor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sonia Sotomayor. Show all posts
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
The Supreme Court: It Is All Relative
TW: I have posted on this in the past. The Supreme Court has been traditionally a conservative institution. It came up with Dred Scott and numerous reactionary rulings limiting civil rights, it greatly hindered FDR's New Deal and the Republican administrations of Reagan and the Bushes put an end to the progressiveness of the Warren Court of the 50's and 60's. Republicans get the importance of the SCOTUS, I am still not convinced Democrats do. Conservatives whine and moan using all their little codewords but at the end of the day, the SCOTUS post-Sotomayor will still be plenty conservative.
From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"...The Supreme Court, and the legal profession in general, have moved decisively rightward since the '70s. Cass Sunstein, who clerked on the Court in 1980, explains it well:
In 1980, when I clerked at the Court, the justices were, roughly from left to right, Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Byron White, John Paul Stevens, Lewis Powell, Potter Stewart, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist. Believe it or not, this Court was widely thought to be conservative. But think, just for a moment, about how much would have to change in order for the Court of 2007 to look like the supposedly conservative Court of 1980.
First we would have to chop off the Court's right wing, removing Scalia and Thomas and replacing them with Marshall and Brennan. Far to the left of anyone on the Court today, Marshall and Brennan believed that the Constitution banned the death penalty in all circumstances, created a right to education, and required the government not merely to protect the right to choose but actually to fund abortions for poor women.
Next we would have to replace Kennedy with Blackmun. Blackmun was also to the left of anyone on the current Court. Fiercely protective of the right to privacy and opposed to the death penalty on constitutional grounds, Blackmun believed that the social-services agencies were constitutionally obliged to protect vulnerable children from domestic violence and that affirmative-action requirements were broadly acceptable.
Then we would have to leave Breyer, Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg essentially as they are. All of a sudden, the four would be perceived as the Court's moderates rather than its liberals, operating as a group much like White, Stevens, Powell, and Stewart...
To say the least, all this would represent a radical change in the Court's composition -- so radical that liberals cannot even fantasize about it. But this radically changed Court would be essentially identical to the supposedly conservative Court of 1980!
Here is another way to demonstrate the point. In 1980 Stevens often operated as the Court's median member; in many cases he (along with Powell) was the Justice Kennedy of that era. But Stevens is frequently described as the most liberal member of the current Court. If he qualifies for that position, it is not because of any significant change in his own approach, but because of a massive shift in the Court's center of gravity."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/05/i_am_an_important_fact_the_sup.html
From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"...The Supreme Court, and the legal profession in general, have moved decisively rightward since the '70s. Cass Sunstein, who clerked on the Court in 1980, explains it well:
In 1980, when I clerked at the Court, the justices were, roughly from left to right, Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Byron White, John Paul Stevens, Lewis Powell, Potter Stewart, Warren Burger, and William Rehnquist. Believe it or not, this Court was widely thought to be conservative. But think, just for a moment, about how much would have to change in order for the Court of 2007 to look like the supposedly conservative Court of 1980.
First we would have to chop off the Court's right wing, removing Scalia and Thomas and replacing them with Marshall and Brennan. Far to the left of anyone on the Court today, Marshall and Brennan believed that the Constitution banned the death penalty in all circumstances, created a right to education, and required the government not merely to protect the right to choose but actually to fund abortions for poor women.
Next we would have to replace Kennedy with Blackmun. Blackmun was also to the left of anyone on the current Court. Fiercely protective of the right to privacy and opposed to the death penalty on constitutional grounds, Blackmun believed that the social-services agencies were constitutionally obliged to protect vulnerable children from domestic violence and that affirmative-action requirements were broadly acceptable.
Then we would have to leave Breyer, Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg essentially as they are. All of a sudden, the four would be perceived as the Court's moderates rather than its liberals, operating as a group much like White, Stevens, Powell, and Stewart...
To say the least, all this would represent a radical change in the Court's composition -- so radical that liberals cannot even fantasize about it. But this radically changed Court would be essentially identical to the supposedly conservative Court of 1980!
Here is another way to demonstrate the point. In 1980 Stevens often operated as the Court's median member; in many cases he (along with Powell) was the Justice Kennedy of that era. But Stevens is frequently described as the most liberal member of the current Court. If he qualifies for that position, it is not because of any significant change in his own approach, but because of a massive shift in the Court's center of gravity."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/05/i_am_an_important_fact_the_sup.html
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sotomayor
TW: Am not going to get too much into the trees on this topic but two things. Sotomayor has an interesting background see below. Two, barring some skeleton in the closet the Republicans are crazy to oppose this nomination intensely. Can they raise some money with the base? Probably.
But unless Obama appoints an outright conservative that is going to be the case with any of his nominees. Sotomayor is highly qualified. The Republicans risk further pushing themselves into the toilet with women, Hispanics and moderates as Sotomayor happens to be all three. Those three groups are the same three groups Republicans will eventually need to attract should they wish to regain electoral strength.
From NYT"
"...Judge Sotomayor, 54, grew up in a Bronx housing project, a child of Puerto Rican parents. She would be the court's first Hispanic justice. Her father died when she was 9, leaving her mother to raise her and a brother. In speeches to Latino groups over the years, Judge Sotomayor has recalled how her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to send her and her brother to Catholic school, purchased the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood and kept a warm pot of rice and beans on the stove every day for their friends.
She loved Nancy Drew mysteries, she once said, and yearned to be a police detective. But a doctor who diagnosed her childhood diabetes suggested that would be difficult. She traded her adoration of Nancy for an allegiance to Perry -- she became a fan of Perry Mason on television, she said, and decided to become a lawyer.
She went to Princeton, which she has described as a life-changing experience. When she arrived on campus from the Bronx, she said it was like "a visitor landing in an alien country." She never raised her hand in her first year there. "I was too embarrassed and too intimidated to ask questions," Judge Sotomayor said.
In one speech, she sounded some themes similar to Mr. Obama's description of his social uncertainties as a biracial youth in a largely white society.
"I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit," she said, adding that that despite her accomplishments, "I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up."
After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, she went to Yale Law School, worked for Robert M. Morgenthau in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and spent time in private practice before being named to the bench..."
From Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:
"...H.W. Bush nominated her for the district court in 1992 (she'd been recommended by Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Clinton nominated her for the appeals court bench five years later. Senate Republicans, as is their habit, held up Sotomayor's nomination for more than a year, "because they believed that as a Hispanic appellate judge she would be a formidable candidate for the Supreme Court."
But unless Obama appoints an outright conservative that is going to be the case with any of his nominees. Sotomayor is highly qualified. The Republicans risk further pushing themselves into the toilet with women, Hispanics and moderates as Sotomayor happens to be all three. Those three groups are the same three groups Republicans will eventually need to attract should they wish to regain electoral strength.
From NYT"
"...Judge Sotomayor, 54, grew up in a Bronx housing project, a child of Puerto Rican parents. She would be the court's first Hispanic justice. Her father died when she was 9, leaving her mother to raise her and a brother. In speeches to Latino groups over the years, Judge Sotomayor has recalled how her mother worked six days a week as a nurse to send her and her brother to Catholic school, purchased the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood and kept a warm pot of rice and beans on the stove every day for their friends.
She loved Nancy Drew mysteries, she once said, and yearned to be a police detective. But a doctor who diagnosed her childhood diabetes suggested that would be difficult. She traded her adoration of Nancy for an allegiance to Perry -- she became a fan of Perry Mason on television, she said, and decided to become a lawyer.
She went to Princeton, which she has described as a life-changing experience. When she arrived on campus from the Bronx, she said it was like "a visitor landing in an alien country." She never raised her hand in her first year there. "I was too embarrassed and too intimidated to ask questions," Judge Sotomayor said.
In one speech, she sounded some themes similar to Mr. Obama's description of his social uncertainties as a biracial youth in a largely white society.
"I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit," she said, adding that that despite her accomplishments, "I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up."
After graduating summa cum laude from Princeton, she went to Yale Law School, worked for Robert M. Morgenthau in the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and spent time in private practice before being named to the bench..."
From Steve Benen at Washington Monthly:
"...H.W. Bush nominated her for the district court in 1992 (she'd been recommended by Daniel Patrick Moynihan), and Clinton nominated her for the appeals court bench five years later. Senate Republicans, as is their habit, held up Sotomayor's nomination for more than a year, "because they believed that as a Hispanic appellate judge she would be a formidable candidate for the Supreme Court."
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