Keep you powder dry

[The Big Dog]

The Supreme Court released two major rulings today...

** They overturned a Louisiana law that authorized the death penalty for child rapists. This, I believe, was a good thing. The ultimate penalty should be reserved for the ultimate crime of taking another human life with criminal intent and malice aforethought. You can read the opinion here.

** In a matter sure to set off the hue and cry against "Big Oil" they overturned the punitive award in the Exxon Valdez case, chopping the award from $2.5 billion to $500 million. Justice Souter, of all people, wrote the opinion for an 8-0 judgement. You can read the opinion here.

The Chief Justice announced that tomorrow will be the last session of the term meaning that all four remaining opinions will be released. Those include a major campaign finance case, a case that involves wholesale electricity sales and spot marketing and, most importantly to several of us here, the opinion on the Washington DC gun ban.

[subdjoe]

I just read on another board that there is speculation that Scalia is writing it up, and it is a plurality decision. If that is truely the case, then, basically, nothing is really decided and cleal cut.

[The Big Dog]

Oh I think some things will be decided, and the doors will be opened to a whole boatload of future litigation. There were not to be any magic bullets, pardon the pun, in this case from the day they published the question of law to be settled. The plurality will almost certainly conclude individual right. The nitpicking will go to what is "reasonable restriction".

If they conclude individual right and remand it back to the lower court for trial, they'll be revisiting the issue in a few years when the outcome of that trial comes back to them. In the meantime, presuming that they conclude some form of reasonable restriction that is open to argument, and our side has some horsepower to start going after many of the unreasonable restrictions that exist in California law.

[jgaffney]

I personally think that the Supremes have overstepped in their convoluted argument to apply the Eighth Amendment (cruel and unusual punnishment) to a death sentence for child rape. The good citizens of Louisiana have decided that the crime of child rape is so heinous that a person convicted of that crime should be put to death. There is nothing cruel or unusual about that.

If a judge decided unilaterally that a rapist should be put to death, that's one thing. But, when a state passes a law authorizing the death penalty for certain crimes, that is an illustration of society protecting itself from the worst elements among us.

IMO, this is another case of the Constitution being stretched in a direction it was never intended to go in. Just like the expansion of the "commerce clause" to include regulation of isolated wetlands by the Corps of Engineers.