NEWS FLASH

Justice Ginsburg Wants Supreme Court To Return To Ruling That Banned The Death Penalty | Speaking to law students at the UC Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, California, yesterday, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the High Court should return to a 1972 ruling that halted executions nationwide. Asked what she would like to accomplish in her remaining years of service, Ginsburg said “I would probably go back tot he day when the Supreme Court said the death penalty could not be administered with an even hand, but that’s not likely to be an opportunity for me.” The Court’s ruling in the 1972 Furman v. Georgia case “concluded that the arbitrary application of the death penalty and the disproportionate number of minorities that were executed made the death penalty ‘unusual’” — thus in violation of the 8th Amendment‘s prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment. At the same event, Ginsburg also called for equality for gays and lesbians: “We should not be stopped from pursuing whatever talent God has given us simply because we are of a certain race, a certain religion, a certain national origin, a certain gender or gender preference.”