A fan page for Dahlia Lithwick, the rockingest Supreme Court columnist ever ever ever.
A confession?
I have a crush. On a woman I would not be able to identify, even if she were selling aquarium filters door-to-door. Which she wouldn't be, by the way. Because she's wonderful.
You may know her. Her name is Dahlia Lithwick, and our acquaintance has spanned three cities, three apartments and two houses, three jobs, and countless emocore albums. In a perpetually changing universe, her sweet, unerring "Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor" has been one of only a handful of fixed stars. No matter what case I am working on, what legal argument I am putting together, in the background there is always Dahlia.
This is for her.
(based on "The Faces of NPR," by Dahlia Lithwick)
Tuesday, October 26, 2004
dahlia, on this year's elections
Supreme Silence: Why the Supremes will not decide this year's presidential election.
We shall see....
Monday, October 25, 2004
dahlia, on justice rehnquist's cancer
Benched? What Chief Justice Rehnquist's cancer means for the election ("Would the Bush v. Gore court collapse into an elderly ball of scratching, biting, hair-pulling 4-4 indecision?")
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
dahlia, on all those stories about the supreme court and the election these days
Supremely Scary: The sudden outbreak of Supreme Court horror stories.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
dahlia on roper v. simmons
The Young and the Reckless: The Supreme Court contemplates executing juveniles.
I have to say, this is my favorite in a long time. Such great lines!Obviously the Founders didn't think executions of adolescents were cruel and unusual, so we know where Scalia's vote will go. But Scalia is cruelly pinned beneath the ruling in Trop v. Dulles—a 1958 case holding that the Eighth Amendment "must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Unlike much of the court's jurisprudence, this analysis does not require poring over texts or channeling Thomas Jefferson. Instead, the court is asked to blink directly into the bright light of science and current events to determine whether "evolving standards of decency" mandate a change in the notion of what is cruel and unusual. Among the justices who believe the human race is evolving in what is decidedly the wrong direction, this is pure hell. Even contemplating the New Age notion that a "teenage brain" exists must be cruel and unusual punishment for Clarence Thomas. But this is the test. So, away they go.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
dahlia on booker and fanfan
Batman and the Penguin Eat Blakely: The Supreme Court term opens with strange bedfellows.Christopher Kelly from Madison, Wis., has 30 minutes to argue for his client, Freddie Booker, whose drug case was reversed and remanded by the 7th Circuit. Breyer unloads more than a decade's worth of anguish: His first hypothetical involves at least four parts and is posed at least three times.
Justice Breyer really likes those guidelines.
