Looking back playfully before looking forward to the new SCOTUS term

I have not spent too much time on Supreme Court previews recently (partially because Ryder Cup previews are more timely and somewhat more interesting these days).  But, especially with the new Term about to start, I had extra fun reading this great "revue" of last SCOTUS Term from the pen of Jon Elwood, which is titled "What Were They Thinking -- The Supreme Court in Revue, October Term 2009." Here are a couple of amusing paragraphs from the revue focused on the Court's Eighth Amendment work last Term:

If you noticed that society refilled the tank without being asked the last time it borrowed the car, you’re not alone in marking the progress of a maturing society.  Justice Kennedy has been sufficiently impressed that he’s recently voted (and sometimes written opinions) to render unconstitutional previously lawful sentencing practices under the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause — think Atkins v. Virginia (2002) (holding it unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded offenders); Roper v. Simmons (2005) (holding it unconstitutional to execute defendants who murdered while under age 18), and to a lesser extent (because the Court had already so held regarding rape of an adult), Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008) (holding capital punishment cannot be imposed for rape of a child).  Kennedy reprised his role as a one-man evolving standard of decency in Graham v. Florida, which is one of those opinions that people seem to forget when they’re bemoaning the arch-conservative Roberts Court.  The Court held 6-3 that the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause does not permit imposing a sentence of life without parole on a juvenile offender convicted of a nonhomicide offense.  The Court noted that while 37 states permit such sentences, only 11 impose them as a practical matter, and they were mostly states without a first-rate daily paper or bookstore.  Thus, there was a national consensus against imposing sentences of life parole on such offenders.

The sort of numerical analysis that is reserved for Eighth Amendment cases, movie-studio accounting, and the federal budget alone would have been enough to cause TMJ-aggravating tooth-gnashing on the right, but Kennedy was not done yet.  In a selfless effort to promote renewable energy, Kennedy ended his opinion by noting that the Court’s conclusion was supported by the fact that the sentencing practice was “rejected the world over.”  The resulting geysers of steam emanating from conservatives’ ears promises to be a significant source of thermal energy for years to come.