If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough. - Mario Andretti

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Wanna know why I love Scalia?  As you’ve probably heard, the SCOTUS today declared, in its usual 5-4 split, that executing adults who were under 18 at the time of their crime is cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore unconstitutional.  I agree with the decision, that this is a line that shouldn’t be crossed.  But listen to the justification given by Anthony Kennedy.

“The age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood. It is, we conclude, the age at which the line for death eligibility ought to rest,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. ...  “It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime,” he wrote.

What I find absolutely obscene is a US court taking into account international opinion.  It is not the function of a court to judge the morality of a law, only whether or not it is constitutional.  The idea that constitutionality is some way secondary to international opinion is horrific, and substantially limits the power of the legislative branch to perform its function.  The system of checks and balances does not include a provision for what the rest of the world (i.e. Europe) thinks, nor should it ever.  It’s beyond comprehension that we have 5 justices sitting on our highest court who don’t appreciate that when it comes to adjudicating laws in the United States, the opinion of the rest of the world means exactly dick.  But thankfully, we have Scalia.

In a dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia disputed that there is a trend and chastised his colleagues for taking power from the states.

“The court says in so many words that what our people’s laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: ‘In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,’” he wrote.

“The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation’s moral standards,” Scalia wrote.

Exactly.  This decision is exactly like Roe v. Wade.  I might agree with the outcome, but the decision itself is awful.  The proper avenue to outlawing execution of minors (or legalizing abortion) is through the legislative branch, but that’s much more difficult than finding five justices who will totally disregard the Constitution in favor of world opinion.