Death, Juries and Scalia

Amid all the recent assaults on the Bill of Rights, including the latest trashing in the USA Patriot Act and the denial of habeas corpus to citizens, amid all this, in the span of one week, the Supreme Court has issued rulings almost beyond the dreams of the most ardent civil libertarians.

Listen to the exultant cry of Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who said this is "the most favorable term in a quarter of a century, in terms of death penalty jurisprudence."

For those who have gazed aghast over the past generation as jury rights have been trampled by tough-on-crime fanatics and liberal elites, there are paragraphs in certain opinions in the Court's rulings that are as momentous as any in the Warren Court. From whose pen did these sentiments issue?

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