Posted by Orin Kerr:
The Arch-Conservative Rehnquist Court,
fresh from [1]its decision invalidating the juvenile death penalty,
today expanded the scope of prisoner civil rights claims [2]in one
decision and made it harder for prosecutors to prove a defendant's
prior criminal record to trigger higher punishments [3]in another
decision. Finally, in [4]a concurring opinion, Justice Thomas strongly
suggested that the Court is ready to expand Sixth Amendment
protections again by overruling a 1998 precedent that exempted prior
past convictions from the Court's new pro-defendant Sixth Amendment
jurisprudence.
The two decisions today plus the juvenile death penalty decision
last week reflect some major victories for Justice Stevens. All three
cases featured bare five-vote majorities, and each one reflected a
different set of Justices. The majority in the death penalty case was
the four left-of-center Justices plus Kennedy; the majority in the
prisoner civil rights case today was the four left-of-center Justices
plus O'Connor; and the result in the sentencing case was the four
left-of-center Justices minus Breyer plus Scalia and Thomas. Plus,
note that Stevens is getting to five votes with an 8-member Court.
That means that he will still have the votes even if Chief Justice
Rehnquist resigns and a very conservative nominee replaces him.
References
1. http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-633.ZS.html
2. http://scotus.ap.org/scotus/03-287p.zo.pdf
3. http://scotus.ap.org/scotus/03-9168p.zo.pdf
4. http://scotus.ap.org/scotus/03-9168p.zc.pdf
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[email protected]
http://highsorcery.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
