The Supreme Court and coerced confessions: Arizona v. Fulminante in perspective

Article Abstract:

The US Supreme Court's decision in Arizona v. Fulminante overturning precedent and applying harmless error analysis to the prosecutorial use of involuntary confessions shows how judges have exceeded their power to interpret the law and assumed the public's power, via their elected state and federal representatives, to make law. When judges create constitutional rights without justifying their actions in terms of the Constitution, the balance of power envisioned by the founding fathers is upset. Illegitimate judicial intervention in such state-specific matters as criminal justice especially offends public powers.

Political aspects, Powers and duties, Confession (Law), Confessions (Law), Duress (Law), Coercion (Law), Judge-made law, People (Constitutional law)

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Back to the future: the Supreme Court's retroactivity jurisprudence

Article Abstract:

Decisions in James B. Beam Distilling Co v Georgia and American Trucking Assns v Smith suggest that the US Supreme Court is returning to the common-law doctrine of retroactivity of judicial decisions, reversing a 25-year doctrine of prospectivity. Under the common law, judicial decisions were always retroactive because of the belief that judges discover existing law rather than create it. Justice Scalia has advocated a return to retroactivity based on Article III of the Constitution. Retroactivity is likely to strengthen the conservative direction of the court by making expanded rights more costly.

Analysis, Retroactive judicial decisions

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The Model Physician-Assisted Suicide Act and the jurisprudence of death

Article Abstract:

The Model State Act to Authorize and Regulate Physician-Assisted Suicide represents a very limited perspective on the issue, based on principles of autonomy, individualism and utilitarianism. Human life is given no special value in the utilitarian calculus. Moreover, it is doubtful whether patients contemplating suicide would consider such a utilitarian calculus or be able to perform it accurately. Effects on family members, the physician-patient relationship, medical ethics, the law of homicide, and broader social and political effects are not included as part of the utilitarian calculus.

United States, Interpretation and construction, Assisted suicide, Uniform state laws, Medical law, states

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