A Foolish Consistency
Beldar looks at the two controversial opinions issued by the Supreme Court at the end of the last term. In Kennedy v. Louisiana, the court held that “evolving standards of decency” precluded the death penalty in cases of child rape. But the court based its decision largely on an inaccurate assessment of the trends. Justice Kennedy wrote that Congress had recently expanded the crimes meriting the death penalty, but had not included rape or child abuse among them. Congress did exactly that, however, in the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
In Boumediene v. Bush, the court “extended American constitutional rights to foreigners held by the American military on foreign soil who are alleged to have engaged in illegal warfare against
Beldar sees a pattern:
Every member of the Court, and every one of their law clerks and staff members — including each of the five Justices in the Boumediene majority — have now been conclusively proven by their screw-up in Kennedy v. Louisiana to be utterly ignorant of even such important details about the UCMJ as what crimes under it are punishable by death.
Five of the same Justices who didn’t know enough about the UCMJ to know that it currently allows for capital punishment for child rapes nevertheless felt righteously, omnipotently competent to plunge themselves and the rest of the civilian federal courts into overturning — and then taking over, via their habeas corpus powers — the UCMJ-based system for determining the fates of these military prisoners.
