Today in Supreme Court History: July 15, 1819

7/15/1819: John Marshall publishes defense of McCulloch v. Maryland in the Alexandria Gazette under the pseudonym "A Friend of the Constitution."

 

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Campbell v. Florida, 400 U.S. 801 (decided July 15, 1970): denied cert in murder case where defendant argued that it was error to exclude jurors who would impose death penalty only if recommendation for mercy was added (this was between Witherspoon v. Illinois, 1968, which struck a statute allowing peremptory excusals of jurors who had general objections to death penalty, and Wainwright v. Witt, 1985, can exclude automatically anti-death penalty jurors but not those who had reservations about it

[DaivdBehar]

The death penalty appellate business is a hoax, and a $billion lawyer bunko operation. The vile pro-criminal Supreme Court banned it. That caused lawyer unemployment. It reversed and started this gaslighting racket.

A federal statute should end it.

I support the Italian death penalty. Guard waves a carton of cigs. Troublesome prisoner is stabbed 50 times. The investigation finds he committed suicide.

[DaivdBehar]

Arguing at a party about the cruelty of the needle with a Cali death penalty appellate lawyer, the head of the program. I then ask, what's with all the purple, black and blue on her arm? She says, the techs could not get her blood. They had to dig around a long time. The legal system is the Twilight Zone.

[DaivdBehar]

Marshall was corrupt and unethical. He did not belong on the bench. His decisions were catastrophic.

I do support his decision allowing civil forfeiture. It is the legal remedy to eradicate all the woke colleges, billionaires, and media outlets.

[Martinned]

I was going to say that nowadays Supreme Court justices just give speeches defending their judgments, but it turns out I have no good way of proving that because the Supreme Court website shows no speeches since August 2019. I'm reasonably sure that one or two Justices have given a lecture here or there since, and I'd think that as a general principle such remarks should be published on the court's website so that everyone can read what they said.

https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/speeches/speeches.aspx

[David Nieporent]

There may have been an intervening incident that might have limited speech giving since then.

[SMP0328]

McColluch v. Maryland proves the necessity of the Bill of Rights. Congress and many, many Presidents would have committed every act prohibited by the Bill of Rights, based on McColluch's overly broad reading of the Necessary and Proper Clause, if the Bill of Rights had not been adopted and there would have been no remedy as there would have been no Constitutional violation.

[Martinned]

Or maybe, without a bill of rights, the Supreme Court would have been more reluctant to give Congress and the President such a long leash.

[SMP0328]

I think the New Deal Court would have handed down the same decisions it did without the Bill of Rights as it did with the Bill of Rights. Even with the Bill of Rights we got Korematsu.

[Cal Cetín]

Marshall also posted here under a pseudonym to defend his decision.