All Blog Posts from Courtwatch

The United States Supreme Court Monday tackles a sensitive legal issue that has taken on both great political and economic relevance this past year.

At a time when budget shortfalls are causing state and local bureaucrats to release prisoners early from over-crowded and expensive jails, the Justices have chosen to decide whether the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" precludes life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders who have not committed capital crimes.

Two Florida cases bring the topic to the High Court. In one, a 17-year-old was sentenced to life without parole after he was convicted for taking part in an armed home invasion while he was on parole for another crime. In the other, a 13-year-old was sentenced to life without parole after he was convicted for raping an elderly woman.

According to the Sentencing Project, an advocacy organization which tracks such things, of the 111 juveniles around the nation currently serving life sentences without parole for non-capital crimes, 77 are in Florida.

Terrance Jamar Graham and Joe Harris Sullivan, the two young men who are challenging the lengths of their sentences, argue simply that the punishment did not fit their crimes given their respective ages. Lawyers for Sullivan, only 13 when he was sentenced, state the core of his case this way: "Life imprisonment without parole sentences for children of 13 are so vanishingly rare as to make their repudiation by contemporary American society unmistakable." They are thus emphasizing the "unusual" in "cruel and unusual" punishment.

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And so it comes to pass at the United States Supreme Court this week that the constitutionality of a movie about a woman who could easily be a Justice (and who one day may be) will be judged by a woman who actually is.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, sitting for your first oral argument since joining the Court last month? Meet Hillary Clinton, The Movie. Oh, wait. Perhaps you've already met!

Even though we are weeks away from the first Monday in October, the Court meets this Wednesday, in a rare September session, to evaluate the constitutionality of important campaign finance laws. The case is a big one, but the question at its core is simple: Does the First Amendment distinguish between campaign contributions from individuals and those of corporations?

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Stewarded by some of the most conservative justices in its history, and making a mockery of accusations that it contains a liberal, activist agenda, the good ship “Supreme Court” continued its relentless rightward tack this past term. It entrenched Rehnquist-era notions of limited rights and remedies; set the stage for the further obliteration of Warren-era doctrines and practices; and reminded politicians of all stripes that it alone among the current branches of government hews Republican rather than Democrat.

With only a few exceptions, the Court ruled against employees to the benefit of employers, against environmentalists to the gain of polluters, and against suspects in favor of law enforcement officials. The self-proclaimed “umpire” on the Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., continued his unseemly pattern – first identified by writer Jeffrey Toobin – of calling only balls for one team and only strikes for another. Justice Clarence Thomas shed any pretense of moderation and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court’s swing vote, demonstrated over and over again that he’s a centrist only in relation to his conservative colleagues.

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