| Rewriting the Declaration, the ACLU’s odor, and more: | |
| July 4 | 1776—The Declaration of Independence is a stirring statement of America’s creed, but is it also a sexist and xenophobic document? Defending the Supreme Court’s increasing use of foreign law in support of its rulings on the meaning of the Constitution, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg titles a 2005 speech “‘A decent Respect to the Opinions of [Human]kind’: the Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication”. Obtusely appealing to the Declaration of Independence to justify the Supreme Court’s dependence on foreign law, Ginsburg cannot resist the urge to purge the gender bias she perceives in the Framers’ observation that “a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind” requires a declaration of the “causes which impel them to the Separation.” Nor, apparently, does she notice that one of those stated causes was that King George III “has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution.” (See here for more on Ginsburg’s embarrassingly shoddy speech.) |
| July 5 | 1989—Displaying its usual disregard for the interests of local communities in maintaining minimal standards of behavior, the American Civil Liberties Union protests the written policies developed by the Morristown, New Jersey, public library to deal with a homeless man who camped out in the library, was belligerent and disruptive, stared at and followed library patrons, talked loudly to himself and others, and had an odor so offensive that it prevented areas of the library from being used by patrons and from being worked in by library employees. (See This Week for February 14, 1992, for the rest of the story.) |
| July 6 | 1989—In solo dissent in Hamblen v. Dugger, Florida justice Rosemary Barkett opines that a capital defendant is not permitted to waive his right to present evidence of mitigating circumstances. Such waiver, she contends, somehow makes it impossible for the sentencing court to carry out its statutory role of weighing aggravating and mitigating circumstances when deciding whether to impose a death sentence. But our adversary system routinely depends on the parties to choose what evidence to present. When no evidence of mitigating circumstances is offered, it simply follows that the mitigating circumstances carry zero weight. |
| For an explanation of this recurring feature, see here. | |