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Page Number: 2

2 

KENNEDY v. LOUISIANA 

Statement of SCALIA, J. 

Eighth Amendment would have been laughed to scorn if it 
had read “no criminal penalty shall be imposed which the 
Supreme  Court  deems  unacceptable.”    But  that  is  what 
the majority opinion said, and there is no reason to believe 
that absence of a national consensus would provoke second 
thoughts. 
  While  the  new  evidence  of  American  opinion  is  ulti-
mately irrelevant to the majority’s decision, let there be no 
doubt  that  it  utterly  destroys  the  majority’s  claim  to  be 
discerning a national consensus and not just giving effect 
to  the  majority’s  own  preference.    As  noted  in  the  letter 
from  Members  of  Congress,  the  bill  providing  the  death 
penalty  for  child  rape  passed  the  Senate  95–0;  it  passed 
the  House  374–41,  with  the  votes  of  a  majority  of  each 
State’s  delegation;  and  was  signed  by  the  President.  
JUSTICE KENNEDY’s statement posits two reasons why this 
act by Congress proves nothing about the national consen-
sus  regarding  permissible  penalties  for  child  rape.    First, 
it  claims  the  statute  merely  “reclassif[ied]”  the  offense  of 
child rape.  Ante, at 2. But the law did more than that; it 
specifically established (as it would have to do) the penalty 
for  the  new  offense  of  child  rape—and  that  penalty  was 
death:  “For  an  offense  under  subsection  (a)  (rape)  or  sub-
section  (b)  (rape  of  a  child),  death  or  such  other  punish-
ment as a court-martial may direct.”  §552(b)(1), 119 Stat. 
3263  (emphasis  added).    By  separate  executive  order,  the 
President  later  expressly  reauthorized  the  death  penalty 
as a punishment for child rape.  Exec. Order No. 13447, 72 
Fed.  Reg.  56214  (2007).    Based  on  these  acts,  there  is 
infinitely  more  reason  to  think  that  Congress  and  the 
President made a judgment regarding the appropriateness 
of  the  death  penalty  for  child  rape  than  there  is  to  think 
that the many non-enacting state legislatures upon which 
the  majority  relies  did  so—especially  since  it  was  widely 
believed that Coker took the capital-punishment option off 
the table.  See Coker v. Georgia, 433 U. S. 584 (1977).