John Paul Stevens and the U.S. Constitution
I am a big fan of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens; here’s the post I wrote in gratitude for his service when he left the bench six years ago.
Fortunately for us all, Stevens lives on, enabling him to make important suggestions on the U.S. Constitution. In particular, Stevens published his proposed amendments in 2015 in the book “Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.” Here’s a quick summary of these excellent ideas.
What’s the relevance to renewable energy? Mainly, it’s Stevens’ beliefs that the will of the people is consistently being frustrated by misinterpretations of what the Founding Fathers actually intended. As long as Supreme Court decisions like “Citizens United” are in place, the things the people almost uniformly want (clean energy, better background checks for prospective gun owners, etc.) will remain out of reach.
Some of retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens are a good idea. However, his assertion that a life sentence would prevent a murderer from murdering again is wrong. Inmates serving life sentences have committed murder again by murdering other inmates. Even so, I still oppose the death sentence for various reasons.
But as long as there is a death sentence, why should it be so difficult to carry it out? The various drug protocols to execute someone are controversial and do not always work as intended. They result in needless and endless debate. It really isn’t difficult to kill someone painlessly. It could easily be done by putting the prisoner into an air-tight chamber, like the former California gas chambers, and gradually replace the air with nitrogen. The prisoner would gradually and painlessly lose consciousness and die. But again, there are several valid reasons to abolish the death sentence and it should be abolished.
Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens served his nation with integrity and diligence.
As a private citizens he’s fully entitled to pursue his own political agenda.
Like the majority of his fellow Justices, I disagree with many of his rulings, but Justice John Paul Stevens (ret.) is fully entitled to express his views and it’s always a pleasure to read his opinions.
Frank, I also abour the death penalty on moral, philosophical, and practical grounds. But no where in the Constitution are federal agencies empowered to overrule the States on the imposition of capital punishment.
I believe that, somewhere in the next 20 or 30 years, there will be a US Supreme Court decision interpreting the 8th Amendment such that all capital punishment is banned as cruel and unusual. This will finally bring the United States into line with the rest of the developed world that has concluded that the death penalty is not a part of a civilized society.
Of course, the good people of Texas will have a complete meltdown about this; it will give them one more compelling reason to want to leave the union.
In response, there will be plenty of people in the other 49 states who think this is a terrific idea and vigorously encourage Texas to go off and become a country of its own, stuck as it is in the sensibilies of the 19th Century.
Marcopolo,
For the U.S. federal government to prevent states from using capital sentences it would probably take a constitutional amendment or a finding by the Supreme Court that the Constitution already proscribes it. Without that it would probably be up to each individual state.
Hi Frank,
I really hope that would occur sooner than later.
But the ruling in Justice Brennan in Furman v. Georgia, really sets out the guidelines;
1) The “essential predicate” is that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity,” especially torture.
2) A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.
3) A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.
4) A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.
It would take great political courage for US federal legislators to abolish the death penalty in country where automatic fire arms can be openly purchased.