Category: miller v alabama

I've had an item on a slow burn since the middle of the summer, and now I think I know what I want to say about it.

In July, The Washington Post ran an interesting piece about whether it was appropriate for U.S. Supreme Court justices to use Google while forming their opinions. "The justices routinely supplement their arguments with facts, studies, media reports, law review articles and other materials that none of the parties in the case before them ever put forward or countered," wrote Robert Barnes. This practice "has become a new focus of legal academic research."

Barnes begins be recalling the angry dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia in June when the court struck down some provisions of Arizona's immigration law. Scalia cited a...