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"Becoming Justice Stevens: How and Why Some Justices Evolve"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this interesting new FindLaw commentary by Professor Michael Dorf, which includes a section sub-titled "The Death Penalty: Justice Stevens's Recent Change of View."  In addition, here are the first few paragraphs of the piece's final sub-heading "Does American Law Have a Liberal Bias?": One factor that undoubtedly plays a role in judicial drift over time is experience. Justices Powell, Blackmun, and Stevens each pointed to the years of death penalty cases in which they participated as crucial factors in their loss of faith in the system of capital punishment. Exposed in detail, and repeatedly, to a broken system, they eventually questioned the premises on which their earlier votes had been based. That experience may explain drift on the death penalty but it is not a general explanation for leftward drift...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on April 21, 2010 (boomark / email).