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We Should Just Make Up Our Own Laws


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I'm kinda confused. Where in the Constitution does it prohibit the death penalty for people under 18? We can find that people under the age of 18 aren't mature enough to face execution for (premeditated) murder, but are capable of deciding whether to have an abortion without parental consent. We can ignore the facts of a premeditated murder case of somebody who was 17.5 years old and bragged about getting away with it because they were under 18. We can overturn a ruling of just the opposite 15 years earlier. All this because the majority of unelected people sitting on a bench with no accountability though so. Not because of extensive research, or an outcry by the people, but because it was their personal opinions.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getc...03-633#dissent2

Here is an excerpt from Justice Scalia's dissent:

In urging approval of a constitution that gave life-tenured judges the power to nullify laws enacted by the people's representatives, Alexander Hamilton assured the citizens of New York that there was little risk in this, since "[t]he judiciary ... ha neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment." The Federalist No. 78, p. 465 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961). But Hamilton had in mind a traditional judiciary, "bound down by strict rules and precedents which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them." Id., at 471. Bound down, indeed. What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years--not, mind you, that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to "the evolving standards of decency," ante, at 6 (internal quotation marks omitted), of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists. Worse still, the Court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: "n the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment." Ante, at 9 (internal quotation marks omitted). The Court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our Nation's moral standards--and in the course of discharging that awesome responsibility purports to take guidance from the views of foreign courts and legislatures. Because I do not believe that the meaning of our Eighth Amendment, any more than the meaning of other provisions of our Constitution, should be determined by the subjective views of five Members of this Court and like-minded foreigners, I dissent.

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Why do we still institute the death penalty anyway?

Because many of our states have voted it into law. That is how this country works. People vote things into law and we abide by them. Now it seems that unelected people can now disregard those laws and impose their personal opinion on the rest of the country. I don't know about you, but that makes me very nervous.

Also I need to proofread the subject line before submitting. :P

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sometimes the necessary thing isn't always the right thing and sometimes the right thing isnt always the necessary. Its the culling of the population. We have rules to live by, someone does something hanous enough to warrent death then we kill him/her in an effort to better serve society.

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