The Supreme Court, the Federal Circuit, and Patent Law Televising the Supreme Court MCRI TDRA of 2006 Death Penalty Partisan Gerrymandering Confrontation Clause     An Online Symposium on the Death Penalty Kansas v. Marsh, though a case about the role of aggravating and mitigating factors in the death penalty sentencing phase, led to a spirited debate about the flaws in the implementation of the death penalty. In this online discussion, six authors offer their perspective on the future of state death penalty laws in light of Kansas v. Marsh. Souter Passant, Scalia Rampant: Combat in the Marsh [HTML] [PDF] Samuel R. Gross, University of Michigan Law School Kansas law provides that unless a capital sentencing jury concludes that the mitigating factors that apply to the defendant's crime outweigh the aggravating factors, it must sentence the defendant to death. Legitimizing Error [HTML] [PDF] Rebecca E. Woodman, Capital Appellate Defender Office Since Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court has sought to harmonize competing constitutional demands under Eighth Amendment rules regulating the two-step eligibility and selection stages of the capital decision-making process. Furman's demand for rationality and consistency requires that, at the eligibility stage, the sentencer's discretion be limited and guided by clear and objective fact-based standards that rationally narrow the class of death-eligible defendants. The High Court Remains as Divided as Ever Over The Death Penalty [HTML] [PDF] George H. Kendall, Holland & Knight, LLP More than three decades ago, in Furman v. Georgia, a sharply divided Supreme Court struck down all existing capital punishment schemes because the results they generated were arbitrary, discriminatory, and unreasoned. No member of that Court remains on the Court today, and the Court has grown increasingly conservative ever since. The Revolution Enters the Court: The Constitutional Significance of Wrongful Convictions in Contemporary Constitutional Regulation of the Death Penalty [HTML] [PDF] Jordan Steiker, University of Texas Law School Over the last decade, the most important events in American death penalty law have occurred outside the courts. The discovery of numerous wrongfully convicted death-sentenced inmates in Illinois led to the most substantial reflection on the American death penalty system since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Putting the Guesswork Back Into Capital Sentencing [HTML] [PDF] Sean D. O'Brien, Public Interest Litigation Clinic In 1972, in Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court deemed it "incontestable" that a death sentence is cruel and unusual if inflicted "by reason of [the defendant's] race, religion, wealth, social position, or class, or if it is imposed under a procedure that gives room for the play of such prejudices." Stevens's Ratchet: When the Court Should Decide Not to Decide [HTML] [PDF] Joel A. Flaxman, University of Michigan Law School Hidden underneath the racy death penalty issues in Kansas v. Marsh lurks a seemingly dull procedural issue addressed only in separate opinions by Justices Stevens and Scalia: whether the Court should have heard the case in the first place.

© Copyright Michigan Law Review, All Rights Reserved.