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Kagan's first steps on the Court By Glenn Greenwald Since Elena Kagan was confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, the Court has not yet issued any written rulings on appeals it has accepted for review. But there are two cases in which Kagan's actions shed some minimal light on how she is approaching her role -- minimal, though still worth noting, particularly in light of how much time and attention was devoted here to her being named as Justice Stevens' replacement. On September 23, 41-year-old convicted murderer Teresa Lewis became the first woman executed in the United States in over five years, when the State of Virginia administered a lethal injection into her arm. That occurred only because the Supreme Court, two days earlier refused, by a 7-2 vote, to stay her execution. Lewis' lawyers argued that execution was unjust because "she is borderline mentally retarded, with the intellectual ability of about a 13-year-old," because she "had been used by a much smarter conspirator," because she had no prior history of violence and had been a model prisoner, and because "the two men who fired the shots received life terms." The two "liberal" justices on the Court -- Ginsburg and Sotomayor -- voted to stay the execution, but Elena Kagan voted with Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, and Breyer to allow it to proceed. It's impossible to know for certain how Justice Stevens would have voted, but he did proclaim in a 2008 decision that he believes the death penalty to be unconstitutional pursuant to the Constitutional bar on "cruel and unusual punishment". full: http://www.salon.com/news/elena_kagan/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/10/13/kagan ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
