plant-fan
(32 posts)
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Tue Mar-15-05 10:13 AM
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Scalia and the "living constitution" |
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I know Scalia has a problem with the idea that our understanding of the Constitution could "evolve" in accordance with the attitudes and mores of the time, in particular this new-fangled idea that execution of a person for crimes committed as a juvenile is wrong.
My question is - how can he square this with the prohibition of cruel and UNUSUAL punishments ? After all, what is "usual" or "unusual" can and does certainly change over time. If we are the only country (or one of just a few) that still kills juvenile offenders, that seems pretty unusual to me.
Even if we decide to exclude the rest of humanity from consideration, the fact remains that all but a tiny, tiny fraction of crimes committed by juveniles are NOT punished by execution even in our country, meaning again that the practice is "unusual" and hence unconstitutional. Either you kill all or most of the juvenile murderers, or you shouldn't kill any of them, is how I read this. Does anyone disagree ?
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bowens43
(1000+ posts)
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Tue Mar-15-05 10:17 AM
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1. You're right on target |
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Edited on Tue Mar-15-05 10:17 AM by bowens43
this is why Scalia was in the minority.
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DU
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Sat May 11th 2024, 07:21 PM
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