Who Will Replace Justice Stevens?

The legal community is still digesting the news that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will retire at the end of this term.  The New York Times recently ran a profile of Justice Stevens consisting of the recollections of his former law clerks.  Here is the link, in case you missed it.  Justice Stevens was never considered one of the intellectual heavyweights of the Supreme Court, but I predict that we will come to miss his consistent, and traditional (some might say quaint), view of the limited role that the judiciary should play in crafting the laws that we live by.

Speaking of predictions, it is time to weigh in with your prognostications.  Who will President Obama select to replace Justice Stevens.  I will go first.

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Capital Punishment and the Contemporary Cinema

American cinema of the last century includes a large number of films with major characters on death row.  James Hogan’s silent film “Capital Punishment,” for example, screened in 1925.  During the 1950s, the death penalty was at the forefront in such respected films as Fritz Lang’s “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” (1956), Robert Wise’s “I Want to Live” (1958), and Howard Koch’s “The Last Mile” (1959).  The late 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century saw an even greater number of films inviting contemplation of the death penalty.

The latter flurry of films perhaps relates to the period’s especially pronounced campaign to end capital punishment.  In keeping with the often-heard assertion that Hollywood leans to the left politically, most of these films seem opposed to the death penalty.  Some express their opposition in the fashion of a “message film,” while others proffer more subtle dramatic narratives.

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When Battered Women Kill . . .

Do feminist concerns regarding violence against women justify expanding the self-protection defense in criminal law?  This was the topic of the second annual George and Margaret Barrock Lecture on Criminal Law, which was delivered Thursday afternoon by Professor Joshua Dressler of Ohio State.  Dressler left no doubt about where he stands on the issue: whether motivated by domestic-violence concerns or otherwise, recent proposals to expand the right to use deadly force are inconsistent with a due regard for the value of human life.  To be clear, Dressler would not deny the right to use deadly force when a woman is actually being attacked or threatened — his focus is more on cases in which a sleeping or otherwise nonthreatening batterer is killed. 

The webcast of Dressler’s provocative lecture is available here.   The lecture will also be published later this year in the Marquette Law Review.

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