Court Opinion

ID: 9787397
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 00:15:47.446524+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:36:50.336149
License: Public Domain

Rose, J.,
concurring:
I concur with the majority’s conclusion that the death penalty was excessive when applied to Servin, but I believe that an additional ground for ruling out the death penalty for this minor is that customary international law precludes the most extreme penalty for juvenile offenders.
At first blush, the U.S. Senate’s reservation to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) seems completely incompatible with the object and purpose of the treaty. However, three factors convince me that the Senate’s reservation has continued viability. First, the ICCPR does not expressly prohibit reservations or make reference to the object-and-purpose test. Second, it is reported that there is a ‘ ‘widespread state practice in support of reservations to human rights treaties” and that “approximately one-third of the parties to the ICCPR made reservations to over a dozen substantive provisions.”1 Third, while 11 of the 146 nations objected to the Senate’s reservation because it violated the basic purpose of the treaty, none of the objections were raised within the twelve months after the communication of the United States’ reservation, and therefore, the reservation is deemed accepted under the Vienna Convention. This court has carefully considered the effect of the Senate reservation as I was concerned about in Domingues v. State2 and I am gratified that we have fully addressed this important issue.
*795This is not the end of the hunt in the international law arena, however, because Servin also argues that assessing the death penalty upon juveniles violates an international customary law norm. His argument is that a proposition becomes so accepted among a great many nations that it becomes an international law norm, and therefore, should be recognized as customary international law and bind all nations. Two of the legal authorities who argue such a position are Professor Harold Koh and Professor Louis Henkin.
Professors Koh and Henkin contend that customary international law is federal law and supercedes state law that is inconsistent. “Once customary norms have sufficiently crystallized, courts should presumptively incorporate them into federal common law, unless” federal directives specifically oust the norm.3 Without contrary federal directives, bona fide rules of customary international law become federal law unless the United States affirmatively protested the norm before the norm matured.4
Several commentators make persuasive arguments that it is customary international law that juveniles should not be executed.5 “[Tjhere is an emerging customary international law under which capital punishment of juveniles is prohibited.”6 Indeed, there appears to be overwhelming support among the majority of nations to ban the imposition of the death penalty for juvenile offenders.7 Notably, this support appears to be influencing several states within the United States to also ban the death penalty for juveniles.8
While there are other respected legal authorities that reach the contrary conclusion,9 I am persuaded that banning the execution *796of juveniles is a customary international norm and this ban should be recognized as binding on the United States. In my view, this is an additional reason to reduce Servin’s penalty to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Curtis A. Bradley & Jack L. Goldsmith, Treaties, Human Rights, and Conditional Consent, 149 U. Pa. L. Rev. 399, 433 (2000).

 114 Nev. 783, 961 P.2d 1279 (1998).

Harold Hongju Koh, Is International Law Really State Law?, Ill Harv. L. Rev. 1824, 1835 (1998).

See F. Giba-Matthews, Customary International Law Acts as Federal Common Law in U.S. Courts, 20 Fordham Int’l L.J. 1839, 1854 (1997).

See James F. Hartman, ‘Unusual’ Punishment: The Domestic Effects of International Norms Restricting the Application of the Death Penalty, 52 U. Cin. L. Rev. 655, 669-82 (1983); Louis Henkin, International Law: Politics and Values 189 (1995) (noting that a number of the rights protected by the ICCPR have become customary international law); Ved P. Nanda, The United States Reservation of the Ban on the Death Penalty for Juvenile Offenders: An Appraisal Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 42 Depaul L. Rev. 1311, 1328-33 (1993); David Weissbrodt, Execution of Juvenile Offenders by the United States Violates International Human Rights Law, 3 Am. U. J. Int’l & Pol’y 339, 357-69 (1988).

Nanda, supra note 5, at 1328.

See Stanford v. Kentucky, 492 U.S. 361, 390 (1989) (Brennan, J., dissenting).

See Pamela Brogan, Moves to ban death penalty for juveniles gain momentum, Reno Gazette-Journal, Sept. 12, 2001, at 14A.

See Bradley & Goldsmith, supra note 1, at 426-27 (concluding that the *796provision of the ICCPR with respect to which the United States has attached reservations is not binding customary international law); see also Curtis A. Bradley & Jack L. Goldsmith, Customaiy International Law as Federal Common Law: A Critique of the Modern Position, 110 Harv. L. Rev. 815, 849-870 (1997) (concluding that customary international law should not be treated as federal law and binding on the states in the absence of authorization from the federal political branches).