Supreme Court hears arguments on rights of foreigners in death penalty cases
The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday in a case examining the rights of foreigners in death penalty cases. In Medellin v. Dretke , a Mexican citizen was convicted of murder in a Texas state court...
Senate bill would discourage US courts from citing foreign precedent
US Senator John Cornyn , a senior Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sunday introduced a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that judicial decisions regarding the US Constitution should not be influenced by foreign law....
JURIST Contributing Editor Marjorie Cohn of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego notes that with the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Roper v. Simmons, the United States has finally joined the community of nations that says the state-sanctioned...
Douglas Berman :"When the Supreme Court declared in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), that the Eighth Amendment prohibited the execution of mentally retarded offenders, the Court punted a number of tough administrative...
Stephen Bainbridge :"I'm increasingly opposed to the death penalty on both pragmatic and moral grounds, but I nevertheless found much to agree with in Justice Antonin Scalia's scathing dissent from the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision striking down the...
Roper v. Simmons, Supreme Court of the United States, March 1, 2005 . Excerpt [from the majority opinion by Justice Kennedy}:The differences between juvenile and adult offenders are too...
BREAKING NEWS ~ Supreme Court strikes down death penalty for juveniles
CBS News is reporting that the US Supreme Court has struck down the possibility of the death penalty for juvenile killers. SCOTUSBlog has more on the Court's 5-4 opinion in Roper v. Simmons, 03-633.10:30 AM ET -...
