Justice Kennedy — still “growing in office”

Reader Jim Melcher called our attention to this piece by Thomas Sowell about a speech by Justice Kennedy to the American Bar Association. Sowell shares our disgust with the tendency of our Supreme Court Justices to find inspiration in European law. Here’s what Sowell had to say about this:
“‘Our [criminal] sentences are too long,’ Justice Kennedy told the American Bar Association. 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.”
The clueless Kennedy frets that criminals in our society are not receiving enough mercy. Sowell exposes these remarks as elitist pap. By the way, I wish I had been in the ABA audience so I could have given the lie to Kennedy’s presumptuous assertion that “Every day in prison is much longer than any day you’ve ever spent.”

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