Supreme Court’s Kidnap Decision
In its latest decision, the Supreme Court has finally shown how cavalier it truly has become in regard to not only constitutional law but toward international law as well. Justice Stevens’ characterization of the decision as “monstrous” does not go far enough in describing what has to stand as the most outrageous example of interpretive law since the age of Hammurabi.167772161 If we as a nation, ostensibly a democratic republic, are to continue to decry terrorism and hold forth on the virtues of liberty, kidnaping can have no place in our foreign or legal policy. Implicitly (and now by Supreme Court edict explicitly), we sanction, when we attempt to justify criminal means with a legal end, the very conduct we condemn. Moreover, we establish a terrifying precedent for rights abuse throughout the world.
RICHARD NEWTON MEYER
Los Angeles
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