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Does Williams provide a tea leaf for Kennedy?

By Douglas A. Berman

As detailed in this post at SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court today upheld against a congressional child porn criminal provision against a First Amendment challenge: [T]he Court ? after years of repeatedly nullifying Congress? efforts to stamp out child pornography on the Internet ? finally upheld such a law, a 2003 statute that Congress shaped in a way that it hopes would spare it from the same fate as earlier attempts. In an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court found that the 2003 law did not reach too far and that it was not vague in its scope.  The decision came on a 7-2 vote in United States v. Williams (06-694). Williams in an interesting read, and I could not help but wonder if this closing paragraph from the majority opinion provides some hint as to the Court's developing views about the capital child rape in the Kennedy case:Child pornography harms and debases the most defenseless of our citizens...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 19, 2008 (boomark / email).