What a strange week. London's burning, and almost 15,000 young Britons have been taken into custody; the stock market's gone unhinged; and weirdest of all, one of the top professional soccer teams in the world, Real Madrid, won the race to sign . . . a seven year old. There have been some interesting developments in the world of criminal law, too: 1. The New York Times Magazine published this article about the Supreme Court's last term. Among the interesting tidbits: "The court’s most recent additions [Justices Kagan and Sotomayor] have quickly become a formidable duo on the court’s left flank, with the promise to serve as a 21st-century version of Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan. They have voted the same way in 96 percent of the cases they have both heard — the highest rate of agreement of any pair of justices." The Court's oral argument calendar for November is now available here. 2. Justices Marshall and Brennan were, of course, famous opponents of the death penalty. Those interested in the capital punishment debate may want to check out a pair of posts at Sentencing Law and Policy: this one, highlighting the cost of capital cases in Indiana, where some rural counties have been forced to raise their property tax rates to support capital proceedings; and this one, reporting on a British editorial calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty and citing a number of American studies on deterrence for support. 3. On another note entirely, the New York [...]
Faculty Coordinators
