Court-Martial Death Sentence For Serial Rapist-Murderer: This morning, Dan Slater posted links to the New York Times and AP articles on the President's approval of the death penalty for Ronald A. Gray at the Wall Street Journal Blog. Our News Scan has the link to the Washington Post article. According to Slater's post, Gray was convicted of four murders and eight rapes from April 1986 through February 1987 while he was stationed at Fort Bragg. Gray has been held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 1988. Approval of Gray's death sentence yesterday does not mean he will immediately be executed. The President's decision only clears the way for a round of appeals in civilian courts, beginning with the Federal District Court. One of the issues the civilian courts are likely to review whether Gray can be executed as Congress has since required all capital cases to be considered by a 12-member jury.

Ninth Circuit Fun in Sun Valley, Idaho: Dan Slater also has a post on Judge Jay S. Bybee's speech at the annual judicial conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Judge Bybee's speech to attendees used pictures to reflect on how the Ninth is viewed by other circuits. Judge Bybee's speech surely got some laughs when he displayed a slide of sword-wielding Mongol hordes attacking on horseback across a plain, and stated, “This is how we appear to the Supreme Court.” For a photo of a colorful band of 1960s hippies sprawled across a bus painted in psychedelic colors he said, “But this is how other circuits see us.” “And this is how other circuits look to us,” he said, for a shot of 1950s Boy Scouts marching in lock step carrying American flags.

Whalen, Dworkin and Boumediene: At Bench Memos, Ed Whalen has posted his critique of Ronald Dworkin's essay, published in the New York Review of Books, on Boumediene v. Bush. Dworkin's essay claims the Boumediene decision was a "Great Victory," but Whalen disagrees. Whereas Dworkin sees the decision, which “undermines the assumption, widespread among lawyers and scholars for decades, that the Constitution as a whole offers substantially less protection against American tyranny to foreigners than it does to America’s own citizens[]”, as a victory, Whalen contests Dworkin's premise "that there is a constitutional (or moral) mandate to afford foreigners abroad—especially including those detained by the military as enemy combatants—the same rights as American citizens." Whalen finds support for his argument in the Supreme Court's decision of Johnson v. Eisentrager, and the actual text of the text of the Constitution, which was meant to "'secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,' not to the entire world."