8th Circuit, Antonin Scalia, Benchslaps, Death Penalty, Habeas Corpus, SCOTUS, Supreme Court

Benchslap of the Day: Justice Scalia's Dissent in Roper

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Okay, make that yesterday. A reader email drew our attention to the saucy conclusion of Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Roper v. Weaver:

The greatest harm is that done to AEDPA, since dismissing the writ of certiorari leaves the Eighth Circuit’s grossly erroneous precedent on the books. (That precedent, by the way, cannot be explained away—as perhaps the Court’s own opinion can—as the product of law-distorting compassion for a defendant wronged by a District Court’s erroneous action. As noted earlier, the Eighth Circuit was not informed of that erroneous action. It presumably really believes that this is the way AEDPA should be applied.)

Other courts should be warned that this Court’s failure to reverse the Eighth Circuit’s decision is a rare manifestation of judicial clemency unrestrained by law. They would be well advised to do unto the Eighth Circuit’s decision just what it did unto AEDPA: ignore it.

WHACK! As our correspondent notes: “Scalia manages to benchslap both the majority opinion and the 8th Circuit all in the same paragraph.”
Some of Justice Scalia’s colleagues get cheeky on occasion. Another tipster drew our attention to Part IV of Justice Stevens’s Bell Atlantic v. Twombly dissent — which Justice Ginsburg expressly declined to join, perhaps due to its ‘tude.
But at the end of the day, there’s no disputing this truth: When it comes to benchslaps, nobody does it like Nino.
Roper v. Weaver [FindLaw]
Bell Atlantic v. Twombly [FindLaw]

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