Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Column: Handing down history
By Christopher Kromphardt
Daily Eastern News, Eastern Illinois U.
July 01, 2008

Recent political dialogue, given the hearty sway of the impending presidential election, has been mostly limited to discussion of the possibilities of McCain- or Obama-appointed Supreme Court justices. Incidentally, the last several days have seen the handing down of multiple landmark rulings and maneuvers by the Supreme Court that will shape not just the November battlefield, but America as we know it.

Ranging in subject from detainees' rights to the death penalty to interpretation of the Second Amendment, the Court's recent rulings have made significant impressions on jurisprudence more than 200-years-old.

In Boumediene v. Bush, the 5-4 majority found that the Bush Administration's policy of holding so-called enemy combatants, individuals seized abroad but not warranting prisoner of war status, without granting habeas corpus to be unconstitutional. The opinion declared that such detainees, of which there are nearly 300 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have the right to petition in federal court whether the evidence against them is indeed culpable. Boumediene is a benchmark in a series of cases over the last several years. The decision in Boumediene is monumental; it's recognizing a component of the due process rights enjoyed by Americans as applicable to those seized abroad is pivotal to future rulings on America's dealings abroad.

Last Wednesday, the Court dealt with the divisive issue of the death penalty, particularly as punishment for rape of a child under the age of 12. Despite the fact that in the past 44 years not a single execution had been carried out on such charges, Patrick Kennedy, the petitioner in Kennedy v. Louisiana, was set to be executed under Louisiana law for raping an 8-year-old. The Court found 5-4 that an inconsistency between the nature of the crime and the severity of the punishment violated the protection against cruel and unusual punishment guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment.

On Thursday the Court handed down what could arguably be called the most important decision of the last decade. An almost entirely different five Justice-majority from that of Boumediene and Kennedy found in United States v. Heller that Washington D.C.'s legislation regarding owning a handgun were overly stringent and thus in violation of the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, found the ambiguous language of that amendment to mean that, in specific circumstances, the individual's right to possess a handgun cannot be proscribed.

This whirlwind of decision-making by America's highest court has been announced in the last three weeks. The Court is currently in a curious position, its nine members split with four leaning liberally, four leaning conservatively, and one Anthony Kennedy riding the median. Kennedy wrote the majority decision in two of these cases and was in the majority in all three; the courting of his pivotal vote has undoubtedly decided the strictures of each decision. How will an Obama or McCain appointee upset this chemistry? It's hard to tell the future, but in the meanwhile I'll just sit and watch history be handed down from the bench.

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