Here's the opinion where he goes after a twelve year old girl who ate a franch fry in a Metro station.
In the opinion, even he recognises that the situation sucks all around but says he has to go with the way the laws are written. You can't ticket a kid, you can only arrest them. And it was a zero-tolerance law. (Are zero tolerance laws EVER a good idea?)
But we at the Chaliceblog have never flinched from taking the cheap shot, so I'm posting it anyway. Tell all your friends.
CC
4 comments:
Ok, I read the whole decision. He does not take the arrest off of the record of the twelve-year-old girl who got arrested for eating one frenchfry. I understand that the way he interpreted the law did not give him a precedent for doing so. It still sucks.
So, he sticks to the letter of the law more than the spirit of the law? Or is the spirit of the law now interpreted as in favor of damaging the reputation of a twelve-year-old for what was a really minor infraction, though an infraction nonetheless. He apparently doesn't consider the reduced judgment of a child compared to an adult as a legal precedent -- he mentioned that kids can't vote or drive, but didn't follow that with a consideration that what causes us to not let youngsters vote or drive is a lack of adult judgment that we cannot reasonably expect and that we regularly use as a reason to let kids off the hook of responsibility.
So, what does all this mean in a Supreme court Justice? I don't know. It may be the best we can expect from W.
i tried to post a comment earlier but it never came up.
Now it has appeared here. What's going on?
Why doesn't it show on any page but "Post a Comment on"?
Post a Comment