Tracking Life Sentences: With the Supreme Court scheduled to review life sentences without parole for juveniles in Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida, Doug Berman provides some timely links to a new report, No Exit: The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America, by the left-leaning Sentencing Project. Berman's first post provides details of the report. For example, according to Berman's post, "140,610 individuals are now serving life sentences in state and federal
prisons, 6,807 of whom were juveniles at the time of the crime." Berman's second post links to stories discussing the report in the New York Times, USA Today, Birmingham News, and Daily Record. The report also focuses on the "overwhelming racial and ethnic disparities [found] in the allocation of life sentences." We've seen these revelations before, particularly when it came to the death penalty. In one of Kent's past posts, he discusses a study that looked for discrimination when handing out the death penalty. Researchers in that National Institute of Justice Study found it "difficult to determine definitively whether there is
any meaningful association between race or ethnicity and prosecutor
recommendations and decisions to seek or not to seek the death penalty
in federal capital cases."
Partisanship and Judicial Review: At The Ninth Justice, Stuart Taylor Jr. discusses how political leanings can impact how Justices view judicial review and the Constitution. In discussing the "bumper-sticker" liberal and conservative views of constitutional interpretation, Taylor opines that easy to categorize, simplistic views of constitutional interpretation aren't realistic. The reality is that there would not be so many 5-4 decisions if the hardest questions could be solved by applying the Constitution to the facts. Taylor points to ambiguous phrases in the Constitution, like "due process" and "equal protection," and admits "[t]he starting point for honest constitutional analysis is the recognition that most of us...care less about neutral principles of constitutional law than about the political results of the courts' rulings on big issues...." Some Justices, like William Brennan, adhere to a liberal view of constitutional interpretation that often creates policy that clashes with the Constitution. Justices that adhere to the "original meaning" of the Constitution, like Justice Scalia, interpret the Constitution to achieve results that would not "horrif[y] the framers." Each method has its own agenda, and Taylor promises to follow up on the debate surrounding the results of each agenda in his next post.
A Bill to Change the Pleading Standard: David Ingram reports for Blog of Legal Times that Senator Spector (D-Pa.) filed a bill yesterday that would change the pleading standard for civil lawsuits. The Supreme Court recently raised the pleading standard, in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, to a level that has garnered several complaints. Adam Liptak's Sidebar in Tuesday's New York Times relates the impact, and some complaints, surrounding the Iqbal decision. Specter echoed these complaints when he introduced his bill. His bill directs federal courts to back away from the fact-specific approach established in Iqbal and interpret the pleading rules as the Supreme Court did in a much earlier decision, Conley v. Gibson.
Amicus Posts Reach Their Conclusion: Eugene Volokh writes on Volokh Conspiracy that blogger interest has inspired him to post one last post on amicus briefs before he concludes his Federal Appellate Practice treatise series "with two more posts on oral argument." Today's post covers "Judicial Attitudes Toward Amicus Briefs." There are some judges, like Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit, that favor "a narrow view of the circumstances in which leave to file an amicus brief should be granted." Other judges, like former Third Circuit Judge Alito, believe amicus may provide "important assistance to the court."
Partisanship and Judicial Review: At The Ninth Justice, Stuart Taylor Jr. discusses how political leanings can impact how Justices view judicial review and the Constitution. In discussing the "bumper-sticker" liberal and conservative views of constitutional interpretation, Taylor opines that easy to categorize, simplistic views of constitutional interpretation aren't realistic. The reality is that there would not be so many 5-4 decisions if the hardest questions could be solved by applying the Constitution to the facts. Taylor points to ambiguous phrases in the Constitution, like "due process" and "equal protection," and admits "[t]he starting point for honest constitutional analysis is the recognition that most of us...care less about neutral principles of constitutional law than about the political results of the courts' rulings on big issues...." Some Justices, like William Brennan, adhere to a liberal view of constitutional interpretation that often creates policy that clashes with the Constitution. Justices that adhere to the "original meaning" of the Constitution, like Justice Scalia, interpret the Constitution to achieve results that would not "horrif[y] the framers." Each method has its own agenda, and Taylor promises to follow up on the debate surrounding the results of each agenda in his next post.
A Bill to Change the Pleading Standard: David Ingram reports for Blog of Legal Times that Senator Spector (D-Pa.) filed a bill yesterday that would change the pleading standard for civil lawsuits. The Supreme Court recently raised the pleading standard, in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, to a level that has garnered several complaints. Adam Liptak's Sidebar in Tuesday's New York Times relates the impact, and some complaints, surrounding the Iqbal decision. Specter echoed these complaints when he introduced his bill. His bill directs federal courts to back away from the fact-specific approach established in Iqbal and interpret the pleading rules as the Supreme Court did in a much earlier decision, Conley v. Gibson.
Amicus Posts Reach Their Conclusion: Eugene Volokh writes on Volokh Conspiracy that blogger interest has inspired him to post one last post on amicus briefs before he concludes his Federal Appellate Practice treatise series "with two more posts on oral argument." Today's post covers "Judicial Attitudes Toward Amicus Briefs." There are some judges, like Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit, that favor "a narrow view of the circumstances in which leave to file an amicus brief should be granted." Other judges, like former Third Circuit Judge Alito, believe amicus may provide "important assistance to the court."
Leave a comment