Federal Judiciary

Kennedy v. The Constitution

By AndrewHyman

Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion today in Kennedy v. Louisiana, banning capital punishment for someone who rapes a child. It will be a happy day when Justice Kennedy is no longer able to assault the Constitution in this way. I concur with the dissenting opinion in this case (not that the opinion of a mere citizen matters). Capital punishment for rape may be inappropriate, or unreasonable, or unwise, but in a case like this it is obviously not "cruel".

Here?s a summary of the crime, courtesy of Bench Memos: ?The facts are graphic and awful. Kennedy (not the justice) was charged with the aggravated rape of L.H., his then-8-year-old stepdaughter. When police found L.H. some two hours after the attack, she was bleeding profusely from the vaginal area. She was transported to the hospital, where she was discovered to have a laceration to the left wall of the vagina that separated her cervix from the back of her vagina, causing her rectum to protrude into the vaginal structure. Her entire perineum was torn from the posterior fourchette to the anus. The injuries required emergency surgery. Shortly after he committed the rape, Kennedy called a colleague to ask how to get blood out of a white carpet because his daughter had ?just become a lady.??

This is another Kennedy opinion in which he sets his sights on a policy goal, and then proceeds to write an opinion legislating that goal. Never mind the first sentence of the Constitution (stating that the judiciary has no legislative power). Justice Kennedy can go jump in a lake.

UPDATE: Obama said today that he disagrees with this SCOTUS decision by Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter. But the latter three are his model appointees, as he explained on May 8, 2008.

Wolf Blitzer: Are there members, uh Justices right now upon whom you would model...who do you like?

Barack Obama: Justice Breyer, Justice Ginsburg are very sensible judges. I think that Justice Souter, who was a Republican appointee, is a sensible judge.

And doubtless those three justices will say tomorrow that the Washington D.C. handgun ban is perfectly constitutional.

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Full post as published by ConfirmThem on June 25, 2008 (boomark / email).