Crime
Forty-three percent of people released from U.S. prisons are arrested for a new offense within the first year after release. Sixty-six percent are arrested for a new offense within three years of release. A whopping eighty-two percent are arrested for a new offense within ten years of release from prison. (Antenangeli and Durose 2021). Clearly, prisons are not very effective at rehabilitating criminals. The thing is, though, not much else is effective at rehabilitating criminals, either. No rehabilitation program when studied at the highest level of scrutiny has ever been shown to be effective. see Stevenson. There is one thing that does make a difference, however. Age. The older a prisoner is when he is released, the less likely he is to be rearrested. (Antenangeli and Durose 2021).
Free speech
I have written extensively about how the Biden administration coerced and colluded with social media companies to censor conservative speech related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2022 Congressional mid-term elections. You can read those posts here. Murthy v. Missouri, the case challenging that conduct was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court this past Wednesday. Rather than directly addressing the government censorship issue, a majority of the Court punted. The majority opinion found that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the claim, so they dismissed the case without reaching the merits.
Justice Alito authored a dissent, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, criticizing the majority for dodging the important free speech issue. Justice Alito wrote that the censorship in this case “was blatantly unconstitutional, and the country may come to regret the Court’s failure to say so.” He added, “of course, purely private entities like newspapers are not subject to the First Amendment, and as a result, they may publish or decline to publish whatever they wish. But government officials may not coerce private entities to suppress speech, and that is what happened in this case.”
Judicial decision-making
I recently wrote about how Substacker, Adam Unikowsky, used the AI, Claude, to render judicial opinions. Unikowsky is out now with a follow-up piece. You can read it here. In the article, Unikowsky describes how he pulled the already-decided cases from the U.S. Supreme Court’s current term and fed the case briefs into Claude. He then asked Claude to issue opinions. In most of the cases, Claude’s opinion matched that of the Supreme Court. In instances where Claude’s opinion did not match the Supreme Court’s, Claude provided well-reasoned contrary analysis. It gets even more interesting, though.
In Linkde v. Freed, Lindke was a city manager who posted work-related matters on his personal Facebook page. Freed posted hateful comments in response. Lindke then deleted Freed’s comments. Freed sued claiming his free speech rights were violated because Lindke was a public official. The Supreme Court did not decide Lindke on its merits. Instead, the Court created a new legal standard for when such social media posts are official and when they are not and remanded the case to the lower court to apply the new standard.
Without telling Claude the new legal standard the Supremes came up with, Unikowsky asked Claude to come up with a new legal standard of its own to apply in the Lindke case. It did. Claude said, “The inquiry requires a close examination of the totality of the circumstances to assess whether the challenged action is ‘fairly attributable’ to the government.” Claude then listed several relevant factors lower courts should consider in making this determination.
AI has already reached the point of being able to act as a judge. Whether we would want that or not is a separate question. Would parties to a case accept a decision from an AI? I suspect we are going to find out soon.
Judicial restraint
The New York Times recently published an Op-Ed arguing that the Supreme Court needs to do more than just decide cases. Arguing that “deciding cases may not be enough these days,” Author Linda Greenhouse writes that the Court should treat the U.S. Constitution as “an engine of social progress rather than an obstacle to structural reform.”
First, I want you to know that I do not read the New York Times. I picked this tidbit up from a different outlet. I do read fiction, mind you. For instance, I am currently reading Jack Carr’s seventh installment in The Terminal List series, which I highly recommend. I just don’t read the fiction the NYT tries to pass off as news. And second, Ms. Greenhouse is wrong. Just 100% completely and totally wrong. Legislatures are the proper engines for social progress. Courts should just decide cases.
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