This decision is one in which I, typically quite progressive, actually do not support the court decision. As a preface, I am personally completely against the death penalty and find it to be an archaic and abhorent system. However, when it comes to law and the judicial system I feel that my personal prefferences are not the end all be all. The Supreme Court has unequivically held that the Death Penalty impossed on adults is not in and of itself unconstitutional.

Being within that framework, I see the courts decision as being an excercise in faulty logic. Why should the federal courts have the power to decide which crimes can be punished with the maximal punishment possible in state. States usually have this discrection on matters as wide ranging as sexual codes and drugs to more serious felonies. Why should the overall balance of states being against the death penalty for child rape matter in the long run? Doesn’t anyone on here see this as a dangerous precedent? If the majority of states are against homosexuality does that give the court a right to ban it. Indeed, the courts liberal direction on sexual ethics took the exact opposite argument. State balance of favor does not define the overall rightness or wrongness of a policy.

In the end, the question for me is which judicial philosophy do I support. Do I believe that democratic majorities in states can define the rightness or wrongness of an act, regardless of its injury in the long run to individual rights. If so, I can have no child rape death penalty, but also have to say goodbye to homosexual rights, dream away any notion of homosexual marriage, and perhaps say farewell to abortion as the amount of states with bans creeps above + or – 26. this is no a nation I want to live in.