SCOTUS Strengthens 8th Amendment Protections for Intellectually Disabled
In 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court prohibited capital punishment for defendants who suffered from what the Court then called “mental retardation.” However, the Court did not prescribe any particular process or standards for determining which defendants qualify. Florida adopted a particularly restrictive approach, refusing even to consider the full spectrum of evidence of intellectual limitations if a defendant’s IQ had not been scored 70 or lower. Earlier this week, in Hall v. Florida, the Supreme Court rejected this test for failing to take into account the standard error of measurement (SEM) of IQ tests. “This rigid rule,” Justice Kennedy wrote for a narrow 5-4 majority, “creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed, and thus is unconstitutional.” (Along the way, the Court expressly changed its preferred terminology from “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability.”)
Kennedy’s reference to “unacceptable risk” goes to the heart of the disagreement between the majority and the dissenters.
The Aereo case was argued this morning, and before Paul Clement could even get rolling on his introduction on behalf of the broadcaster plaintiffs, Justice Sotomayor hit him with this:
Although the Supreme Court decides dozens of cases every year, it has never decided how to decide those cases. That is, the Court has never adopted a governing approach to constitutional interpretation. Instead, the justices seem to bounce from one method to the next, even when considering the same subject matter. What explains this methodological pluralism? Why doesn’t the Court consider itself bound under the doctrine of stare decisis not only to follow the substantive results of earlier constitutional cases, but also the methodological tools it used in getting there?