Another one.... in The Book Book

July 10, 1991

Funny thing about the U.S. Constitution, we tend to pick out the parts we like and question the parts we don't like. And we're free to do just that.

Take the Supreme Court for instance. Judges are appointed by the president for life, or until they get really old and retire. That means that the executive branch tends to leave a legacy for the future decades. The liberal court appointed by Roosevelt/Truman/Kennedy/Johnson gave us the liberal criminal, abortion, civil rights, etc. rulings that have partially shaped the society we live in.

Now the court is pretty much filled up with conservative judges appointed by the last 30 years of Republican presidents, and the liberal rulings are falling one by one.

Sometimes I care, sometimes I don't.

Example: The court recently ruled that the character of a victim of murder can be used in determining the punishment of the murderer. You get a harsher sentence for killing an upstanding citizen than for killing one of your fellow scum.

The question had been brought before the Supreme Court several times in the past. Each time the court had ruled that the crime and the criminal were all that could be taken into consideration in determining punishment. But now there are enough conservative votes to change the ruling.

The argument in favor in using the victim's character was that both sides of the murderer's character were allowed as evidence, so both sides of the victim's should be, too.

Taking that one step backward, or forward, it would seem that from not on there will be separate trials, one for the accused and one for the victim. Did so and so deserve to be killed or not?

If the victim is alive and testifies against the accused there might be some reason to evaluate the behavior and character of the victim, but allowing (or forcing it would be the same thing) the accused's attorneys to try the victim doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

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The new judge appointed for Thurgood Marshall's seat is a black judge who is opposed to affirmative action quotas. So much for the black seat on the Supreme Court.

Time magazine had a nasty little crack about Marshall. He worked for the NAACP for years before becoming a judge, trying 32 cases before the Supreme Court, winning 29 of them. Of course that wasn't the court we have now.

I seem to have lost my Time so I can't quote word for word but I remember pretty closely what they said. Time said Marshall showed little interest in law except for civil rights, criminal law and freedom of speech. Seems like that's a pretty broad and important set of specialties.