Defining Decency Down
Justice Alito writes:
The Court today holds that the Eighth Amendment categorically prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for the crime of raping a child. This is so, according to the Court, no matter how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator’s prior criminal record may be. The Court provides two reasons for this sweeping conclusion: First, the Court claims to have identified “a national consensus” that the death penalty is never acceptable for the rape of a child; second, the Court concludes, based on its “independent judgment,” that imposing the death penalty for child rape is inconsistent with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
Those evolving standards of decency (in truth nothing more than the sensibilities of five judges) apparently find the rape of a child a little more palatable than in times past. This is progress?
[...] We noted the “evolving standards” fiction in “Defining Decency Down.” [...]
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