Abstract

Editorials

The article presents information related to political issues. In recent years most American thinking about Russia has been based on a missionary premise that the U.S. can and should convert that very different society into a replica of America. But Russia's foreign and domestic policies must be based on popular support and perceived national interests. When then judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was asked during her confirmation hearings about unfairness in application of the death penalty, she described the problem with cool lawyerly balance: the tension between finality and fairness. Justice Harry Blackmun's impassioned dissent on February 22 against the execution of Bruce Edwin Callins was in large part a cry against precisely such Olympian pronouncements; to him the delicate constitutional balance invoked by Ginsburg is a jurist's sell-justifying illusion.