Examining Boumediene's Discussion of the Political Question Doctrine:  At Balkinization, guest-blogger David Stras homes in on the majority's discussion of the political question doctrine in its Boumediene v. Bush decision.  Stras' post gives a nice summary of the "elusive" political question doctrine - which allows federal courts to determine "whether the resolution of a particular issue is a matter for the judiciary or one of the political departments of government" - and then jumps into the Supreme Court's use of the doctrine in last year's Boumediene decision.  Stras believes that after Boumediene, not much remains of the political question doctrine, primarily because "in Boumediene, the Court quickly dismissed the Government's argument that questions of sovereignty are matters for the political branches to conclusively decide."  According to Stras, the Supreme Court based its ruling on its belief that "questions of de jure sovereignty (or a claim of right) are matters for the political branches to decide, but that questions of de facto sovereignty (or practical control over a territory) can be examined by the judicial branch."  Stras is astonished by this rationalization "[g]iven that de jure sovereignty is the clearer purely legal question..." and because the Court's discussion is "in stark contrast to its prior case law, which is quite deferential to the political branches on foreign policy questions."  CJLF's Boumediene brief also discussed deference to political branches and urged that the judiciary was not the proper place to resolve this issue.

Sentence Reductions in Maryland:  Today's Washington Post has an editorial discussing Maryland's "quirky state rule" that allows trial courts to revisit sentences and reduce - but only reduce - a sentence long after the jury has rendered its verdict.  The obvious problem with this practice is that it allows serious offenders back on the street before the trial imposed sentence has been served, even though some of these serious offenders have been denied parole.  And, in spite of the tragic results mentioned in the editorial, Maryland has yet to change its law.  The author of the editorial suggests that failure to change the law could be due to the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy's failure to obtain complete data from the trial judges who are issuing the reductions.  The commission has been ordered to issue annual summaries of the reductions since 2002, but 2007's report "underreport[s]... preventing a complete analysis of [the reductions] impact."  According to the editorial, a Maryland Community paper, the Gazette, found that Montgomery County judges have not reported a single one its 509 sentence reductions for the two year period between 2005 and 2007.

Maryland Death Penalty Defended: Today, the Baltimore Sun posted an Op-Ed by Scott D. Shellenberger the state's attorney for Baltimore County. Shellenberger was a member of the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, and did not agree with the majority's findings.  Shellenberger argues that the the majority (57%) of Marylander's believe the state should keep the death penalty.  He also argues that the majority's argument that the death penalty is too expensive was based on a flawed economic study.  Shellenberger personally believes the death penalty is necessary to protect "ourselves, our police officers and our correctional officers."  In the posted video Shellenberger asks Marylanders to retain the death penalty.