Comments on: Blogger Catches Justice Kennedy With His Pants Down

By: Hugh Janus

Hugh Janus — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:50:36 +0000

To understand this oversight (if it was one), you need to appreciate the completely different track that bills concerning military justice travel through Congress. Military law is the exclusive province of the Armed Services Committees while “normal” federal statutes are typically handled by the Judiciary Committees. Even with the 2006 amendment, the President still can set the maximum punishment for any crime in the military. But it’s good to know that the penalty for rape cannot exceed death in the eyes of some in Congress. That should be sufficient even for most of you diehards.

By: ajacksonian

ajacksonian — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:57:43 +0000

Or, more worrying, is that the SCOTUS staff does not do a keyword search of the US code… perhaps it is beyond scholarship to actually use the following as a sort of ‘hey, is it in the code?’ sort of deal: ‘child rape site:law.justia.com/us/codes/’

Removing the quote marks at the search engine of your choice, of course… if it has site specific look-up capacity, of course. That is, actually, far more worrying that none involved with the case, up and down the line, did that.

And you can do similar work to cite precedent of SCOTUS and lower court decisions, too… that is the power of keyword searching applied to specific parts of the web and is a powerful tool for analysis. With so much material becoming available, especially the actual historical public record, this becomes a prime skill for looking at the law. That none employ it for basic background information in this case? That tells me much from all involved. One would think that instituting a basic part of research at the SCOTUS by those working for the Supremes would be to think of the salient keywords and apply them to the code and previous SCOTUS decisions in the easiest to obtain format that points to the written works digitized for ease of searching.

By: rgaye

rgaye — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:41:19 +0000

As for myself, I’d prefer to stick with the jury system.

Comment by ExRat — 7/2/2008 @ 9:37 am

hmmmm, trial by Judge, trial by jury.

It would depend if I was innocent or guilty..

By: XBradTC

XBradTC — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:38:24 +0000

Peter, as I mentioned, you voluntarily subject yourself to another jurisdiction every time you cross a state line. And yet, the same constitutional test applies when we examine state court rulings and UCMJ cases. It is either constitutional or it isn’t.

By: peter jackson

peter jackson — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 05:08:19 +0000

We seem to have this obsession with the sanctity of criminal lives.

Uh, no. It’s more of a concern about the extent to which the government can use due process to separate a citizen from his or her one and only life. As a citizen, it should concern you as well.

Was this a fair catch? Yes it was. Was it meaningful? Not very. I would suspect a cite of the UCMJ regardless of which way it went. It’s one thing to submit oneself to the discipline of the UCMJ when one volunteers to be in the military. It’s another thing altogether to be be involuntarily subjected to such relatively perfunctory justice under civilian government.

yours/
peter.
yours/
peter.

By: Pink Pig

Pink Pig — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:27:09 +0000

Does anybody think Kennedy is thinking “D’oh! If only I had known of this, I would have voted the other way”?

Well, nobody knows what Kennedy thinks (if that is the word for it). He’s pretty much sui generis. I somehow doubt that he’s going to apologize for it — Supreme Court Justices never do.

BTW am I supposed to know what magic incantation will turn the above quote into a real quote?

By: Pink Pig

Pink Pig — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:19:04 +0000

Of course, it’s not the first instance of a factual error on the part of a Supreme Court Justice, and unfortunately it probably won’t be the last.

By: Pink Pig

Pink Pig — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:16:33 +0000

The comment above was cited by Instapundit as “a factual error at the Supreme Court”. The reference is to the (so far uncontested) fact that Justice Kennedy appears to be unaware of the provisions of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. I haven’t seen any argument in this thread that disputes this. Note to bozos: the question is not whether the UCMJ is good or bad, it is whether J. Kennedy is aware of it.

By: Jim Newell

Jim Newell — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 04:12:42 +0000

According to the Constitution (Article III Section 1), a Supreme Court Justice in the absence of “good behavior” may be impeached. Whaddyathink?

By: AST

AST — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 03:23:50 +0000

We seem to have this obsession with the sanctity of criminal lives. Either we only exist from birth to death, or we live on in another realm or dimension after physical death. If we have no life after this one, what greater crime is there than for someone to destroy the life of another who has done nothing to him? And doesn’t simple justice dictate that someone who does that forfeit his own chance for more time in mortality? What then of someone who rapes and injures a child or so damages another person so that he/she is unable to enjoy a normal life free of fear and mental illness?

The real issue should be, not the punishment, but how sure we are of the guilt of the person accused. It seems to me that cruel and unusual has more to do with the public’s sense of justice than with the kind of philosophical theories that seem to occupy the courts.

Most people would agree with the scriptural saying that someone who harms “one of these little ones” “it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” What implications this would have for waterboarding of terrorists to gain intelligence, I’ll leave to the legal experts.