All Posts Tagged With: "Constitutional law"
Should the CA Supreme Court Overturn Prop 8?
News broke yesterday that the California Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments in March on a challenge the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the “amendment” to California’s constitution prohibiting same-sex marriage. I put the word “amendment” in quotes because whether Prop 8 actually constitutes an amendment is a big part of the dispute. The court directed the parties to argue three issues:
- Is Proposition 8 invalid because it constitutes a revision of, rather than an amendment to, the California Constitution?
- Does Proposition 8 violate the separation-of-powers doctrine under the California Constitution?
- If Proposition 8 is not unconstitutional, what is its effect, if any, on the marriages of same-sex couples performed before the adoption of Proposition 8?
The Exclusionary Rule & Comparative Law
The New York Times ran an interesting story yesterday about how the Supreme Court is inching closer and closer to repealing the exclusionary rule, a principle in criminal procedure in which any evidence that is improperly obtained by the state is automatically inadmissible in court. The story talks about last month’s decision in Herring v. United States, in which Chief Justice Roberts seemed to advocate a new standard for excluding evidence, writing (emphasis mine):
To trigger the exclusionary rule, police conduct must be sufficiently deliberate that exclusion can meaningfully deter it, and sufficiently culpable that such deterrence is worth the price paid by the justice system.
This statement suggests that Roberts believes in a balancing test for excluding evidence rather than automatic exclusion, which has been a principle of American criminal law since the Warren court laid it down in 1961 in Mapp v. Ohio.
IL Special Election Joint Resolution?
Can a legislative joint resolution trump a state statute? The answer to this question is almost always an immediate “No.” But we may have a special case in Illinois. Read more…