Supreme Court Recaps

Now that the Supreme Court has wrapped up for the summer (unless it reconvenes to deal with Blakely fallout), folks are starting to look back at the term as a whole. USA Today has an analysis that trumpets the Court's "protecting liberties" by taking "ideals from history" into consideration. While that's certainly true for cases like Blakely and Crawford, other decisions weren't quite so friendly to individual rights, such as the Ring retroactivity cases upholding hundreds of death penalty sentences, further erosion of Miranda (in Patane), and the "name thyself" Hiibel case.

For the most part, the three terrorism cases (Basul, Padilla, and Hamdi) have been regarded as victories for liberty and defeats for Dubya. Elaine Cassel argues differently on AlterNet. She fairly convincingly points out that the Court left the executive with lots of mostly unchecked (at least in reality) power.