Supreme Court Denies Rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana (Execution for Child Rape) Classic Scalia

This will be of interest not only to Louisiana readers but of course nationwide. Over the years I have become much more wary of State Execution and to be honest I did not support execution for child rape.

However like many conservatives that are also against or at least not big fans of State execution were were not thrilled how the Supreme Court got there.

Anyway Bench Memos has this up this morning

Denial of Rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana [Ed Whelan]
The Supreme Court this morning issued an order denying the state of Louisiana’s petition for rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the wild ruling last June in which the Court held, by a 5-4 vote, that imposition of the death penalty for the crime of raping a child violates the Eighth Amendment. The basis for the petition for rehearing was the Court’s failure, in discerning a supposed “national consensus against capital punishment for the crime of child rape,” to take account of a federal law enacted in 2006 that authorized the death penalty for child rape in military courts. The Court had instead mistakenly stated that federal law does not authorize the death penalty for child rape.
The majority’s order explains its denial of rehearing (and adds a footnote to its original opinion).
Justice Scalia, joined by the Chief Justice, also voted against rehearing. Here’s the core of Scalia’s explanation:

I am voting against the petition for rehearing because the views of the American people on the death penalty for child rape were, to tell the truth, irrelevant to the majority’s decision in this case. The majority opinion, after an unpersuasive attempt to show that a consensus against the penalty existed, in the end came down to this: “[T]he Constitution contemplates that in the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment.” Of course the Constitution contemplates no such thing; the proposed Eighth Amendment would have been laughed to scorn if it had read “no criminal penalty shall be imposed which the Supreme Court deems unacceptable.” But that is what the majority opinion said, and there is no reason to believe that absence of a national consensus would provoke second thoughts.

In other words, the majority was just making it up anyway. (Scalia also takes apart the majority’s explanation.)
Justices Thomas and Alito voted for rehearing.
10/01 10:42 AM