"Every day in prison is much longer than any day you've ever spent," Justice Kennedy said. "A country which is secure in its institutions and confident in its laws should not be ashamed of the concept of mercy."
To which Sowell rejoins:
Two centuries ago, Adam Smith had something to say about mercy as well: "Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent."
Innocent victims of crime seem to disappear from the lofty vision and ringing rhetoric of those who worry that the punishment of criminals is "too severe," as Justice Kennedy put it. If a day in prison can be pretty long, so can every day living in a high-crime neighborhood, where you have to wonder what is going to happen to your son or daughter on the way to or from school.
The whole piece is brilliant as always, but I have to share the conclusion.
"Our sentences are too long," Justice Kennedy also told the ABA. Compared to what? Compared to sentences in Europe? Justice Kennedy has apparently become a citizen of the world, even citing foreign legal precedents in a recent Supreme Court opinion.
Our laws were not made to deal with conditions in Europe. Our judges are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States — not the European Union. If Justice Kennedy finds all this too parochial and confining, he is free to resign from the Supreme Court of the United States and go join the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
Justice Anthony Kennedy is a classic example of someone appointed to the Supreme Court by a conservative Republican, who arrives bearing the "conservative" label, but who then goes native in Washington — or, as the liberals say, "grows."
We can only hope the Bush administration does not succumb to the Senate Democrats' filibuster threat by appointing more Anthony Kennedys to the federal courts. These appointments last a lifetime — which is too long a sentence for crime victims.
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