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One Area Of Law More Than Any Other Besmirches The Constitutional Vision Of Human Dignity. . . . The Barbaric Death Penalty Violates Our Constitution. Even The Most Vile Murderer Does Not Release The State From Its Obligation To Respect Dignity, For The State Does Not Honor The Victim By< Emulating His Murderer. Capital Punishment's Fatal Flaw Is That It Treats People As Objects To Be Toyed With And Discarded. . . . One Day The Court Will Outlaw The Death Penalty. Permanently.

-William J. Brennan

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One Area Of Law

William J. Brennan

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One Area Of Law More Than Any Other Besmirches The Constitutional Vision Of Human Dignity. . . . The Barbaric Death Penalty Violates Our Constitution. Even The Most Vile Murderer Does Not Release The State From Its Obligation To Respect Dignity, For The State Does Not Honor The Victim By< Emulating His Murderer. Capital Punishment's Fatal Flaw Is That It Treats People As Objects To Be Toyed With And Discarded. . . . One Day The Court Will Outlaw The Death Penalty. Permanently.

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You In The Media Ought To Be Ashamed Of Yourselves To Call The Provisions And The Guarantees Of The Bill Of Rights 'technicalities'. They're Not. We Are What We Are Because Of Those Guarantees.

Congress Acknowledged That Society's Accumulated Myths And Fears About Disability And Disease Are As Handicapping As Are The Physical Limitations That Flow From Actual Impairment.

It Is Difficult To Understand Precisely What The State Hopes To Achieve By Promoting The Creation And Perpetuation Of A Subclass Of Illiterates Within Our Boundaries, Surely Adding To The Problems And Costs Of Unemployment, Welfare And Crime.

The Quest For Freedom, Dignity, And The Rights Of Man Will Never End.

Perhaps The Bleakest Fact Of All Is That The Death Penalty Is Imposed Not Only In A Freakish And Discriminatory Manner, But Also In Some Cases Upon Defendants Who Are Actually Innocent.

There Can Be No Doubt That Our Nation Has Had A Long And Unfortunate History Of Sex Discrimination. Traditionally, Such Discrimination Was Rationalized By An Attitude Of "romantic Paternalism" Which, In Practical Effect, Put Women, Not On A Pedestal, But In A Cage.

We Current Justices Read The Constitution In The Only Way That We Can: As 20th-century Americans.

Sex, A Great And Mysterious Motive Force In Human Life, Has Indisputably Been A Subject Of Absorbing Interest To Mankind Through The Ages.

We Look To The History Of The Time Of Framing And To The Intervening History Of Interpretation. But The Ultimate Question Must Be, What Do The Words Of The Text Mean In Our Time.

Ultimate Questions

Our Statute Books Gradually Became Laden With Gross, Stereotyped Distinctions Between The Sexes And, Indeed, Throughout Much Of The 19th Century The Position Of Women In Our Society Was, In Many Respects, Comparable To That Of Blacks Under The Pre-civil War Slave Codes.

We Do Not Consecrate The Flag By Punishing Its Desecration, For In Doing So, We Dilute The Freedom This Cherished Emblem Represents.

If The Right To Privacy Means Anything, It Is The Right Of The Individual, Married Or Single, To Be Free From Unwarranted Governmental Intrusion.

If There Is A Bedrock Principle Underlying The First Amendment, It Is That The Government May Not Prohibit The Expression Of An Idea Simply Because Society Finds The Idea Itself Offensive Or Disagreeable.

If We Are To Be As A Shining City Upon A Hill, It Will Be Because Of Our Ceaseless Pursuit Of The Constitutional Ideal Of Human Dignity.

If A Policeman Must Know The Constitution, Then Why Not A Planner?

After Each Perceived Security Crisis Ended, The United States Has Remorsefully Realized That The Abrogation Of Civil Liberties Was Unnecessary.

No Doubt, There Are Those Who Believe That Judges - And Particularly Dissenting Judges - Write To Hear Themselves Say, As It Were, 'i, I, I.' And No Doubt, There Are Also Those Who Believe That Judges Are, Like Joan Didion, Primarily Engaged In The Writing Of Fiction. I Cannot Agree With Either Of Those Propositions.

At Bottom, The Battle Has Been Waged On Moral Grounds. The Country Has Debated Whether A Society For Which The Dignity Of The Individual Is The Supreme Value Can, Without A Fundamental Inconsistency, Follow The Practice Of Deliberately Putting One Of Its Members To Death.

Authoritative Interpretations Of The First Amendment Guarantees Have Consistently Refused To Recognize An Exception For Any Test Of Truth Whether Administered By Judges, Juries, Or Administrative Officials And Especially One That Puts The Burden Of Proving Truth On The Speaker.

Freedom Of Speech

We Current Justices Read The Constitution In The Only Way That We Can: As Twentieth Century Americans. We Look To The History Of The Time Of Framing And To The Intervening History Of Interpretation. But The Ultimate Question Must Be, What Do The Words Of The Text Mean In Our Time. For The Genius Of The Constitution Rests Not In Any Static Meaning It Might Have Had In A World That Is Dead And Gone, But In The Adaptability Of Its Great Principles To Cope With Current Problems And Current Needs.

We Cannot Let Colorblindness Become Myopia Which Masks The Reality That Many "created Equal" Have Been Treated Within Our Lifetimes As Inferior Both By The Law And By Their Fellow Citizens.

The Law Is Not An End In Itself, Nor Does It Provide Ends. It Is Preeminently A Means To Serve What We Think Is Right.

While The Machinery Of Law Enforcement And Indeed The Nature Of Crime Itself Have Changed Dramatically Since The Fourth Amendment Became Part Of The Nation's Fundamental Law In 1791, What The Framers Understood Then Remains True Today - That The Task Of Combating Crime And Convicting The Guilty Will In Every Era Seem Of Such Critical And Pressing Concern That We May Be Lured By The Temptations Of Expediency Into Forsaking Our Commitment To Protecting Individual Liberty And Privacy.

Religious Conflict Can Be The Bloodiest And Cruelest Conflicts That Turn People Into Fanatics.

It Is Tempting To Pretend That Minorities On Death Row Share A Fate In No Way Connected To Our Own, That Our Treatment Of Them Sounds No Echoes Beyond The Chambers In Which They Die. Such An Illusion Is Ultimately Corrosive, For The Reverberations Of Injustice Are Not So Easily Confined.

There Is No Such Thing As A False Idea.

Lawyers, Before Any Other Group, Must Continue To Point Out How The System Is Really Working-how It Actually Affects Real People. They Must Constantly Demonstrate To Courts And Legislatures Alike The Tragic Results Of Legal Nonintervention. They Must Highlight How Legal Doctrines No Longer Bear Any Relation To Reality, Whether In Landlord And Tenant Law, Holder In Due Course Law, Or Any Other Law. In Sum, Lawyers Must Bring Real Morality Into The Legal Consciousness

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One Area Of Law More Than Any Other Besmirches The Constitutional Vision Of Human Dignity. . . . The Barbaric Death Penalty Violates Our Constitution. Even The Most Vile Murderer Does Not Release The State From Its Obligation To Respect Dignity, For The State Does Not Honor The Victim By< Emulating His Murderer. Capital Punishment's Fatal Flaw Is That It Treats People As Objects To Be Toyed With And Discarded. . . . One Day The Court Will Outlaw The Death Penalty. Permanently.

Capital Punishment...treats Members Of The Human Race...as Objects To Be Toyed With And Discarded.

The Calculated Killing Of A Human Being By The State Involves, By Its Very Nature, An Absolute Denial Of The Executed Person's Humanity. The Most Vile Murder Does Not, In My View, Release The State From Constitutional Restraint On The Destruction Of Human Dignity.

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Executive Power

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Debate On Public Issues Should Be Uninhibited, Robust And Wide-open And That...may Well Include Vehement, Caustic, And Sometimes Unpleasantly Sharp Attacks On Government And Public Officials.

Freedom Of Speech

If Our Free Society Is To Endure, And I Know It Will, Those Who Govern Must Recognize That The Framers Of The Constitution Limited Their Power In Order To Preserve Human Dignity And The Air Of Freedom Which Is Our Proudest Heritage.

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