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Sound Principles, Undesirable Outcomes: Justice Scalia's Paradoxical Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Mirko Bagaric, Sandeep Gopalan
Sound Principles, Undesirable Outcomes: Justice Scalia's Paradoxical Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, Mirko Bagaric, Sandeep Gopalan
Akron Law Review
Justice Scalia is renowned for his conservative stance on the Eighth Amendment and prisoners’ rights. Justice Scalia held that the Eighth Amendment incorporates no proportionality requirement of any nature regarding the type and duration of punishment which the state can inflict on criminal offenders. Justice Scalia has also been labelled as “one of the Justices least likely to support a prisoner’s legal claim” and as adopting, because of his originalist orientation, “a restrictive view of the existence of prisoners’ rights.” A closer examination of the seminal judgments in these areas and the jurisprudential nature of the principle of proportionality and …
Justice Scalia As Neither Friend Nor Foe To Criminal Defendants, Tung Yin
Justice Scalia As Neither Friend Nor Foe To Criminal Defendants, Tung Yin
Akron Law Review
At first glance, Justice Scalia may appear to have been something of a “friend” to criminal defendants, as he authored a number of opinions ruling against law enforcement. However, his opinions reflect his fidelity to his constitutional vision of originalism rather than an intent to favor criminal defendants. Nevertheless, these cases are often offered as legitimate examples of how he did not have a purely results-oriented approach to deciding criminal procedure issues. Yet, a closer examination of Justice Scalia’s “defendant-favorable” opinions suggests that the results often have an air of unreality to them. In practice, there is no way for …
Originalism And The Criminal Law: Vindicating Justice Scalia's Jurisprudence - And The Constitution, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Originalism And The Criminal Law: Vindicating Justice Scalia's Jurisprudence - And The Constitution, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean
Akron Law Review
Justice Scalia was not perfect—no one is—but he was not a dishonest jurist. As one commentator explains, “[i]f Scalia was a champion of those rights [for criminal defendants, arrestees], he was an accidental champion, a jurist with a deeper objective—namely, fidelity to what he dubbed the ‘original meaning’ reflected in the text of the Constitution—that happened to intersect with the interests of the accused at some points in the constellation of criminal law and procedure.” Indeed, Justice Scalia is more easily remembered not as a champion of the little guy, the voiceless, and the downtrodden, but rather, as Texas Gov. …
The Death Penalty And Justice Scalia's Lines, J. Richard Broughton
The Death Penalty And Justice Scalia's Lines, J. Richard Broughton
Akron Law Review
In Justice Scalia’s lone dissenting opinion in Morrison v. Olson, he lamented that, after the Court had upheld a law that he believed violated the separation of powers, “there are now no lines.” Lines were of critical importance to Justice Scalia – in law and in life – and informed much of his work on criminal law issues (Morrison, after all, was a case about the nature of federal prosecutorial authority). In the area of capital punishment, in particular, Justice Scalia saw clear lines that the Court should not cross. He believed that the Constitution contemplates the …