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Deep thoughts about Kennedy while rehearing motion pending

By Douglas A. Berman

Among many cool aspects of the pending SCOTUS rehearing petition in the Kennedy child rape case is the possibility that the Justices might read some new scholarship about their work in Kennedy while considering whether to do a do-over.  Just up on SSRN, for example, is this new piece from Professor J. Richard Broughton, titled "Kennedy, the Fall, and the Tail of Minos."  Here is the abstract: In Dante's Inferno, the damned appeared before Minos, who judged the gravity of their sins and assigned their souls to their respective circles of Hell by wrapping his tail around his body. In this paper, I examine whether, in light of its decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana and its methodology for reviewing categorical exemptions from the death penalty, the Supreme Court has problematically assumed for itself the role of a kind of contemporary constitutional Minos, at least in the realm of capital punishment...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 18, 2008 (boomark / email).