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Michael Dorf on Stevens and Danforth

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"Did Justice Stevens Pull a Fast One? The Hidden Logic of a Recent  Retroactivity Case in the Supreme Court," is the title of Columbia law prof Michael Dorf.Last week, in Danforth v. Minnesota, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state court was free to give greater protection to defendants' rights than the Supreme Court itself requires. Stated that way, the decision is hardly news. In our system of federalism, federal constitutional law is not a ceiling, but a floor. It sets out the minimum protections to which people are entitled. If states--through their constitutions or otherwise--choose to add protection, that is their prerogative. Yet Danforth was no ordinary application of the floor-but-not-a-ceiling principle, because the question in the case was not whether Minnesota could interpret its own state law more broadly than federal law...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on February 29, 2008 (boomark / email).