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United States v. Comstock: Some Early Observations

By Corey Rayburnyung

I want to thank Professor Yung for inviting me to share my thoughts here. Today the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an opinion in United States v. Comstock (opinion here) upholding the federal sex offender civil commitment statute (18 U.S.C. § 4248) under the Necessary and Proper Clause. I will have more to say about this decision in the coming days, but I thought I should post some initial observations of the decision.First, it is not surprising that Justice Breyer authored the majority opinion, since he is known to be the Justice least likely to invalidate federal law. Justices Kennedy and Alito concurred only in the decision. As predicted, Justices Thomas and Scalia dissented.Second, the majority opinion suggests that there may be future constitutional challenges to Section 4248...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sex Crimes on May 17, 2010 (boomark / email).