The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked by lawyers in Louisiana to reconsider its decision last month striking down laws that made child rape a capital offense. The Kennedy v. Louisiana decision was a huge win for anti-death penalty proponents, but the lawyers are saying the court's decision overlooked two crucial legal developments. One being the 2006 federal law and the second being the 2007 executive order making child rape a capital crime under military law.
Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford who represented the defendant in the case, Patrick Kennedy, said "rehearing is completely unnecessary." Military law does not apply to Mr. Kennedy, a civilian, Professor Fisher said, and Congress has not made child rape a capital offense for civilians.
Professor Fisher added that military law has long made rapes of both adults and children capital offenses in some circumstances. The innovation of the 2006 law was only to break out children as a separate category.
To read the full article, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/washington/22scotus.html?ei=5070&en=ba6db93444e6c643&ex=1217390400&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&adxnnlx=1216746835-1PfblGF53EPrWM89Xna7QQ
I think it is important to distinguish between federal law and state law, since we have after all already made them two separate things. According to wikipedia, state law in the U.S. is the "law of each separate U.S. state, as passed by state legislature. It exists in parallel, and sometimes in conflict with, U.S. federal law". Federal law is the common central government, and "formed when a group of political units, such as states or provinces join together in a federation, surrendering their individual sovereignty and many powers to the central government while retaining or reserving other limited powers. As a result, two or more levels of government exist within an established geographic territory".
And then there's military law which is a distinct legal system to which members of armed forces are subject (applicable to members of their military but not usually to civilians). In Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, Congress is authorized to "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces", which is federal law.
With all that said, I still don't understand why exactly our nation is run by separate law systems...especially if some contradict each other. But for this specific case, I think with the way the system is, military law should not be able to enact it's laws onto civilians, overriding state law and civil rights.
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