Supreme Court Wrap-Up

(September 2003)

Jane Alper, issues editor, writes:

Whew! The Court’s 2002-03 term is finally over and the news is surprisingly good. The term ended on a particularly high note with the Court upholding the vitality of affirmative action in the University of Michigan cases and repudiating its hateful decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, holding that people can no longer be prosecuted (or persecuted) because of their sexual orientation. Ben Klein’s article discusses the rationale and implications of Lawrence v. Texas, striking down Texas’s sodomy law.
Unfortunately, the article on the affirmative action cases was not completed in time for inclusion in this issue and, since we had plenty of material already, we decided to postpone it till a later issue.
Of course, the news was not all good. In the criminal law arena, the Court issued several very troubling decisions, most notably the three strikes cases discussed in Dave Nathanson’s article that approved draconian sentences for shoplifting, and the sex offender registry cases discussed in Carol Donovan’s article.
But good news predominated. In two other cases discussed in this issue, the Court upheld the viability of IOLTA programs despite attacks based on the Takings Clause, thereby preserving a major source of funding for legal services programs, and actually found an employment law constitutional as applied to the states.
Most surprising of all was Justice Kennedy’s emergence as an impassioned defender of the rights of gays in Lawrence and Chief Justice Rehnquist (Rehnquist?) as an outspoken feminist in Hibbs.

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