I told you he was back in fine form.
As opposed to last year when I was not so pleased with him, Kennedy has made some interesting rulings. (Not that I always agree with them, but…).
Anyway, the Times has a feature about his role on the Court this year.
He’s like the new Sandra Day-O!
Sphere: Related ContentI know I’m behind the times; on the upside, I know far more about Australian irrigation, catchment levels and the Murray-Darling scheme than I’d ever hoped to learn.
Anyway, onto Justice Kennedy, who reasserted himself as my favorite Supreme Court justice after a lengthly period on my shit list. Writing the Opinion (.pdf) in Boumediene v. Bush (the case that gave Gitmo detainees their rights back) he said:
Although the United States has maintained complete and uninterrupted control of Guantanamo for over 100 years, the Government’s view is that the Constitution has no effect there, at least as to noncitizens, because the United States disclaimed formal sovereignty in its 1903 lease with Cuba. The Nation’s basic charter cannot be contracted away like this. The Constitution grants Congress and the President the power to acquire, dispose of, and govern territory, not the power to decide when and where its terms apply. To hold that the political branches may switch the Constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this Court, say “what the law is.”
I feel that ‘Snap!’ doesn’t properly represent the the six years of illegality under which these detainees have been held.
Kennedy first won his way into my heart via his Opinion in 1993’s Church of the Lukumi Babalu-Aye v. City of Hialeah:
Our review confirms that the laws in question were enacted by officials who did not understand, failed to perceive, or chose to ignore the fact that their official actions violated the Nation’s essential commitment to religious freedom… No one suggests, and on this record it cannot be maintained, that city officials had in mind [as the target of their ordinances] a religion other than Santería.
I might not always agree with him, but the man does not mince words, which I respect more than most things. The Hialeah ruling is like series of uppercuts to the judge below him - awesome.
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