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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   25222 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 22, 2024

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In this Court counsel for the State recognized that narcotic addiction is an illness. Indeed, it is apparently an illness which may be contracted innocently or involuntarily. We hold that a state law which imprisons a person thus afflicted as a criminal, even though he has never touched any narcotic drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there, inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. To be sure, imprisonment for ninety days is not, in the abstract, a punishment which is either cruel or unusual. But the question cannot be considered in the abstract. Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the "crime" of having a common cold.

I think the proportionality argument is pretty solid, even though it doesn’t give us a hard limit.

Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the "crime" of having a common cold.

Who made this argument? I'm not generally of a "it's just like the common cold" take on the pandemic, but I'm assuming a SCOTUS justice would at least see the parallel hypothetical about house arrest for (potentially) having a contagious disease. If nothing else, it seems like an interesting set of tea leaves to read about how future cases might go.

That’s from Robinson v. CA, so…Justice Potter Stewart, d.1985.

I don’t think quarantines fit the bill. In theory, they criminalize the conduct of going somewhere while (potentially) having such a disease, which is distinct from criminalizing the disease itself. Note that in Robinson the man arrested was expressly not taking any unusual actions.

In practice, did any of the lockdown ordinances actually threaten prison? I know there were enforced business shutdowns, presumably enforced via fines. I didn’t live somewhere which actually kept you in your house.

In theory, they criminalize the conduct of going somewhere while (potentially) having such a disease, which is distinct from criminalizing the disease itself.

Ah, so criminalizing sleeping while homeless should be fine. Or walking through town while a drug addict, to go to the Robinson case.

No, this is all sophistry; the 8th Amendment, having been stretched this much, can be said to cover or not cover any given case -- and it will be, based on other criteria. In this case, likely mostly misplaced sympathy for the homeless on the part of Kavanaugh and Barrett, and a corresponding lack of concern for anyone else on their part and that of the leftist justices.

Why do you think it’s misplaced sympathy and not, I dunno, doing their jobs?

Surely it’s not just because they’ve disagreed with your intuition.

Why do you think it’s misplaced sympathy and not, I dunno, doing their jobs?

From ScotusBlog:

But Justice Brett Kavanaugh was at least initially dubious that reversing the 9th Circuit’s decision and allowing the city to enforce its ordinances would make a difference in addressing the homelessness problem. How would your rule help, he asked Evangelis, if there are not enough beds for people experiencing homelessness? Kavanaugh returned to this point a few minutes later, asking Evangelis how sending people to jail for violating the city’s ordinances would help to address the homelessness problem if there are still no beds available when they get out. Such individuals, he observed, are “not going to be any better off than you were before.”

This is not the issue at all! The questions contain within them the implication that the laws have to make the homeless people better off. And thus the implication that somehow the Constitution protects the interests of the homeless over and above the other people who want to use the parks and public spaces that the law actually is in the interests of. This is just sympathy for the wretched, not "doing their jobs".

Do you think the law is going to be struck down by SCOTUS? That would be one hell of a blackpill.

Yes, 5-4 with the three on the left plus Barrett and Kavanaugh. Probably with some hedging that will mean nothing.

How very disappointing.

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