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Full-Text Articles in Supreme Court of the United States
Death By Stereotype: Race, Ethnicity, And California’S Failure To Implement Furman’S Narrowing Requirement, Catherine M. Grosso, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Michael Laurence, David C. Baldus, George W. Woodworth, Richard Newell
Death By Stereotype: Race, Ethnicity, And California’S Failure To Implement Furman’S Narrowing Requirement, Catherine M. Grosso, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Michael Laurence, David C. Baldus, George W. Woodworth, Richard Newell
Faculty Scholarship
This Article examines the possible racial and ethnic implications of California’s expansive death penalty statute in light of the Eighth Amendment’s requirement that each state statute narrow the subclass of offenders on whom a death sentence may be imposed. The narrowing requirement derives from the holding in Furman v. Georgia over forty-five years ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that existing death penalty statutes violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. Citing statistics demonstrating arbitrary and capricious application of capital punishment, a majority of the Justices concluded that a death sentencing scheme is unconstitutional if it …
The Supreme Court, Judicial Elections, And Dark Money, Richard Briffault
The Supreme Court, Judicial Elections, And Dark Money, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Judges, even when popularly elected, are not representatives; they are not agents for their voters, nor should they take voter preferences into account in adjudicating cases. However, popularly elected judges are representatives for some election law purposes. Unlike other elected officials, judges are not politicians. But judges are policy-makers. Judicial elections are subject to the same constitutional doctrines that govern voting on legislators, executives, and ballot propositions. Except when they are not. The same First Amendment doctrine that protects campaign speech in legislative, executive, and ballot proposition elections applies to campaign speech in judicial elections – but not in quite …
Justice Stevens' Temperance, Jamal Greene
Justice Stevens' Temperance, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
On the last opinion day of the last of his 35 Terms on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens issued his valedictory opinion, a 57-page dissent in McDonald v. City of Chicago. Justice Stevens laid out an expansive vision of constitutional interpretation that Justice Alito aptly called "eloquent" in his plurality opinion. Not one for sentimental farewells, Justice Scalia was less generous: "Justice Stevens' approach," he wrote in the last line of his concurring opinion," puts democracy in peril."