Does Justice Kennedy Live on My Planet?

More on the 5-4 Supreme Court decision preventing states from trying juveniles for capital punishment. From Andy McCarthy at The Corner.

Justice Kennedy in Roper: "Our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18 finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty."

Iran Press News, Nov. 16, 2004: “A 14 year old boy died on Thursday, November 11th, after having received 85 lashes; according to the ruling of the Mullah judge of the public circuit court in the town of Sanandadj he was guilty of breaking his fast during the month of Ramadan.”

Maybe now that the good justices are evolving us, we can finally abandon our primitive ways and achieve the lofty due process standards of the “international community.” I could go on, but what’s the point?

Many of the justices are increasingly pointing to laws outside the U.S. constitution to guide their decisions. Only selectively and when it supports their decisions, of course. Further, he even cited international treaties to which the U.S. is neither a signatory or participant.

Polipundit has more on this. Some of Kennedy's opinion is simply unbelievable.

Justice Stevens concurred with Kennedy, claiming that “our understanding of the Constitution does change from time to time“, going so far as to claim that Alexander Hamilton, were he alive today, would agree with Justice Kennedy.

Justice Scalia dissented, stating “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“. Scalia went on to observe “the Court says in so many words that what our people’s laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter“. Scalia also noted “the basic premise of the Court’s argument–that American law should conform to the laws of the rest of the world–ought to be rejected out of hand. In fact the Court itself does not believe it. In many significant respects the laws of most other countries differ from our law–including not only such explicit provisions of our Constitution as the right to jury trial and grand jury indictment, but even many interpretations of the Constitution prescribed by this Court itself. The Court-pronounced exclusionary rule, for example, is distinctively American".