Death Becomes Him
I have been opposed to capital punishment since the day I understood what it meant. I oppose it on practical grounds, economic grounds, and moral grounds. The profound illogic of killing someone to illustrate that killing is wrong is inescapable. Or so I believed until Lee Boyd Malvo came along, the 18-year-old sniper about to go on trial in Virginia, charged with killing FBI analyst Linda Franklin, and who is allegedly responsible for the deaths of nine other people in the Washington, D.C., area last year.
Dahlia Lithwick
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A Judiciary In Peril
Among the constitutional Framers' many conceptual breakthroughs in the field of national governance, none surpasses the creation of a judicial branch with equal status to that of the executive and legislative. Recognizing the need to protect the coequal status of the judicial branch from the threat posed by the other two branches, the framers guaranteed lifetime tenure to federal judges. Recent events are testing Hamilton's premise.
Gregory J. Wallance
BAR-ometer
Civil Rights, Jeff Adachi, Bill Fazio, The Recorder.
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