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Commentary: Please Ignore the Pain

Legal Times
January 9, 2008

Of the 36 death penalty states, 35 have adopted lethal injection at least in part because it was supposed to be more humane than other methods. And yet this week the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Baze v. Rees, a case challenging Kentucky's lethal-injection protocol as too cruel to pass constitutional scrutiny. How can the three-drug protocol be so obviously unsound? History provides the answer, writes law professor Alison J. Nathan.

  
Let the People See Justice

Legal Times
December 3, 2007

Supreme Court Justice David Souter once famously told a congressional committee that "the day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body." But in this age of transparency, attorney Brian Wommack argues, isn't it high time we invited cameras, and thus the American people, into the Supreme Court? The public is missing out, he says -- and most of them probably have no idea what they are missing.

  
In Emotionally Revealing Book, Justice Thomas Is Most Critical of Himself

Legal Times
October 16, 2007

Clarence Thomas' brutally self-critical autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son," bears little resemblance to most early accounts of the book's contents, legal scholar David Garrow writes. To call "My Grandfather's Son" "emotionally revealing" would be the understatement of the year, Garrow says, and fatuous op-ed columnists who insistently declare that Thomas is just bitterly wallowing in self-pity have either failed to read the book or possess an undeclared bias that overwhelmed their critical faculties.

  
In 'Stoneridge,' the Supreme Court Should Focus on Who Really Gains

Legal Times
October 9, 2007

The Supreme Court's highly anticipated Stoneridge case, set for oral argument today, presents the Court with an opportunity to take an important step toward making sense of securities litigation, writes law professor Richard A. Booth. In assessing scheme liability in securities fraud cases, the justices should consider whether the secondary defendants were motivated by the prospect of sharing the loot from the alleged fraud. And in Stoneridge, Booth writes, there was no loot.