Today (June 26), the Supreme Court ruled that Washington D.C.'s sweeping ban on handguns is unconstitutional. The justices voted 5-4 in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller, which focused on whether the city's ban violated the Second Amendment right to "keep and bear arms" by preventing individuals who are unconnected to state militias from having handguns in their homes. Today's ruling follows another 5-4 ruling in the case of Kennedy v. Louisiana by the Court on Wednesday (June 25). The case focused on whether or not execution for convicted child rapists violates the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment. The Court ruled that child rapists cannot be executed, concluding that capital punishment is reserved for those convicted of homicide. These rulings will continue the debate about the policy direction the court will take in difficult and divisive issues, according to two University of North Texas political scientists who research judicial decision making. The Court's majority opinion Kennedy v. Louisiana said that "evolving standards of decency" in the United States forbid capital punishment for any crime other than murder. Therefore, execution of Patrick Kennedy, who would have been the first convicted rapist in 44 years to be put to death in a case in which the victim was not killed, would be unconstitutional, the justices ruled. Dr. Kimi King, UNT associate professor of political science, says that, aside from the doctrinal issues and precedent set by the Court, the ruling has important policy implications. "The vast majority of violent sexual attacks committed against child victims are committed by an acquaintance or family member -- in most cases, an older male," she says. "In such cases where the victim can easily identify the defendant, it then becomes a calculation by the defendant as to whether he should go ahead and kill the victim to eliminate that source of evidence." If capital punishment was in place for rape of a child as well as homicide, the attacker may decide to go ahead and kill the child so that the child cannot testify against him, King says. "The attacker's view may be that if he's going to get the death penalty anyway, why not at least silence the only person who can clearly identify him as the rapist?" she says. "Thus, having the death penalty in the case of ‘only' raping someone may actually lead to attackers murdering their victims." Texas, Montana, Oklahoma and South Carolina allow capital punishment for violent sexual offenses that do not result in the death of the victim. The Court ruled that the fact that these states, and the fact that eight other states have the death penalty on the books for non-homicide related crimes, does not mean that these states' laws do not violate the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment. King's colleague in the UNT Department of Political Science, Dr. Paul Collins, notes that in its decision on District of Columbia v. Heller, the Court focused on the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in almost 70 years. "From a public policy standpoint, this is certainly a clarifying decision, even if one disagrees with the Court's majority," says Collins, an assistant professor. He adds that while the Court affirmed the individual right to keep and bear arms, the Court's majority also indicated that certain types of government restrictions are permissible, provided they are tied to a legitimate government interest. "While the District of Columbia may not outright ban the possession of handguns, it is free to forbid the possession of firearms in sensitive places, such as schools or governmental buildings, provided the District can legitimately justify its reason for doing so," Collins says. "Likewise, governments are free to set limits on who can own guns, such as prohibiting the possession of guns for convicted felons or the mentally ill." District of Columbia v. Heller is also notable for the number of amicus curiae, or "friend of the court," briefs submitted to the Court. A total of 67 amicus briefs were filed from a wide variety of interests, ranging from academics to civil rights and liberties organizations to gun advocacy groups. "These amici illustrated the reality that the Supreme Court is a public policy battleground in which organized interests clash in their attempts to etch their policy preferences into law," says Collins, author of the forthcoming book "Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making." The groups, he says, highlighted to the justices the broad policy significance of the case, discussing a wide assortment of issues, including matters of children's safety, racial discrimination, and federalism, and these amicus briefs "appeared to influence the justices' decision making." He points out that today's decision in District of Columbia v. Heller is "an excellent illustration that not all judicial activism corresponds to liberalism." Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion for the Court, supported by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who are all considered conservative voices on the court. Justice Anthony Kennedy, often seen as a swing vote, also joined the majority -- one day after writing the majority opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana, in which he was supported by moderate and liberal Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. The rulings in these two cases came less than two weeks after another 5-4 ruling by the Court, with Kennedy, Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer as the majority. In the combined cases of Boumediene v. Bush and Al Odah v. the United States, the justices determined that foreigners being held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, retain the same rights as U.S. residents to seek writs of habeas corpus for unlawful detention, paving the way for them to challenge their extended imprisonment in federal court. Collins says while election year rhetoric is "filled with declarations that judges should not ‘legislate from the bench,'" with the proclamations usually aimed at "liberal" judges, today's decision showed that the Court substituted its judgment for that of the District of Columbia's elected officials. "It illustrates the reality that conservative judges are quite willing to substitute their own judgment for that of elected officials," he says. King adds that these 5-4 decisions by the Court in its recent decisions "promises to make the next October term a fascinating point in the Court's history." King may be reached by cell phone at (940) 597-4802 or by e-mail at kking@unt.edu. Collins may be reached by cell phone at (940) 395-5142, in his office at (940) 369-8892 or by e-mail at pmcollins@unt.edu. |
