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Page Number: 44.0

8 

MILLER v. ALABAMA 

ROBERTS, C. J., dissenting 

categories.  Which Graham also said: “defendants who do 
not kill, intend to kill, or foresee that life will be taken are 
categorically  less  deserving  of  the  most  serious  forms  of 
punishment  than  are  murderers.”  560  U. S.,  at  ___  (slip 
op.,  at  18)  (emphasis  added).    Of  course,  to  be  especially
clear  that  what  is  said  about  one  issue  does  not  apply  to 
another, one could say that the two issues cannot be com-
pared.  Graham  said  that  too:  “Serious  nonhomicide 
crimes . . . cannot be compared to murder.”  Ibid. (internal
quotation  marks  omitted).    A  case  that  expressly  puts  an
issue in a different category from its own subject, draws a 
line  between  the  two,  and  states  that  the  two  should  not 
be compared, cannot fairly be said to control that issue. 

Roper provides even less support for the Court’s holding.
In  that  case,  the  Court  held  that  the  death  penalty  could 
not  be  imposed  for  offenses  committed  by  juveniles,  no 
matter  how  serious  their  crimes.    In  doing  so,  Roper  also 
set  itself  in  a  different  category  than  this  case,  by  ex- 
pressly invoking “special” Eighth Amendment analysis for 
death  penalty  cases.  543  U. S.,  at  568–569.    But  more 
importantly,  Roper  reasoned  that  the  death  penalty  was
not  needed  to  deter  juvenile  murderers  in  part  because
“life  imprisonment  without  the  possibility  of  parole”  was
available.  Id.,  at  572.  In  a  classic  bait  and  switch,  the 
Court  now  tells  state  legislatures  that—Roper’s  promise
notwithstanding—they  do  not  have  power  to  guarantee 
that  once  someone  commits  a  heinous  murder,  he  will 
never do so again.  It  would be enough if today’s decision 
proved JUSTICE SCALIA’s prescience in writing that Roper’s 
“reassurance . . . gives little comfort.”  Id., at 623 (dissent-
ing  opinion).  To  claim  that  Roper  actually  “leads  to”  re-
voking its own reassurance surely goes too far.

Today’s  decision  does  not  offer  Roper  and  Graham’s 
false  promises  of  restraint.  Indeed,  the  Court’s  opinion 
suggests  that  it  is  merely  a  way  station  on  the  path  to
further  judicial  displacement  of  the  legislative  role  in