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Affirmative Action

This past term, the Court once again confronted the issue of race-conscious admissions policies in higher education (popularly referred to as “affirmative action”). In Schuette v. BAMN, the Court held that voters of a state may prohibit such programs and policies by way of a state constitutional amendment without running afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. It is important to underscore that this case did not address the constitutionality or the merits of affirmative action itself.

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Conclusion

A single term of the U.S. Supreme Court is an imperfect prism through which to survey the development of the law. It is at once too broad and too narrow: it encompasses a diverse range of legal issues but is limited to individual cases between adverse parties. The problem is inherent in the Court’s role as a primarily appellate body; for despite the fact that the Court picks its own docket, the questions and issues before it still must arise from actual cases and controversies.

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Death Penalty

The Supreme Court has ruled that the death penalty is not a per se violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishments,” but it has interpreted the Eighth Amendment to require that the death penalty be applied with reasonable consistency while at the same time accounting for individual fairness. Furthermore, because the Eighth Amendment requires that penalties be proportionate to the crime punished, certain crimes are not eligible for the death penalty. Similarly, certain defendants may not be executed.

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