Judicial restraint
Last week, former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor died. O’Connor was the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. She favored judicial restraint, as she once explained in an interview, “John Marshall, at his investiture, decided to wear a simple black robe. Pretty soon, the other justices followed suit and now, all judges do it. I think the black robe shows that justice is blind. We all address the law the same, and I think it shows that once we put it on, we are standing united symbolically, speaking in the name of the law. Not speaking for ourselves as individuals.”
Crime
Rob Henderson reports on his Substack this week that 1% of the U.S. population is responsible for 63% of violent crime. Further, he sites a study demonstrating that if all violent crime careers came to a stop after a third conviction, more than 50% of all convictions for violent crime in the total population would be prevented.
More crime
Henderson this week also highlights a study published in Homicide Journal, an academic publication. The study notes that medical advances have prevented even higher murder rates than we are already experiencing in the U.S. The authors credit medical technology with saving the lives of violent crime victims. They state, “Without this technology, we estimate there would be no less than 50,000 and as many as 115,000 homicides annually instead of an actual 15,000 to 20,000.”
Still more crime
More than 2,500 cops have quit the NYPD this year. This represents a 43% increase over the number of cops that quit in comparison year 2018. More concerning, over 500 of the officers who quit did so before earning their pension, meaning they just couldn’t take it anymore. The pre-pension resignations represent a 104% increase over last year. The NYPD police union president says officers are quitting for three, related reasons. First, anti-police sentiment, particularly in urban areas, has caused morale to decrease. Second, this anti-police sentiment has translated into government policies to cut police budgets. Third, budget cuts mean no new officers can be hired. The city has cancelled police academy classes to save money. This causes the officers who are there to be overworked, which, of course, causes more officers to leave.
The police shortage is not unique to New York City. NYC Mayor, Eric Adams, when interviewed about the problem stated, “we have a law enforcement crisis across the country.” Nationally, police resignations were up 47% last year over comparison year 2019. Retirements are up 19% nationally.
Free speech
With the wave of pro-Hamas demonstrations and anti-Semitic attacks on college campuses, Ilya Shapiro, Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, has published an article on his Substack elucidating what speech and conduct is and is not protected by the First Amendment. You can read the helpful guide here. The Presidents of MIT, Harvard and UPenn appeared this week before the U.S. House Education Committee to discuss the rise of antisemitism on their campuses. In a sickening display, all three presidents declined to say that students actively calling for genocide of Jewish people violates their campus code of conduct. Microagressions, however, do violate their code of conduct. Go figure.