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Professor and former Dean Kathleen M. Sullivan and Lecturer in Law Thomas Goldstein are quoted in the National Law Journal's 2007/08 Supreme Court Review:
Stanford Law School's Kathleen Sullivan, chairwoman of the national appellate practice at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, suggests that the "sleeper story" of the term is "the systematic and lopsided deference to business and the raising of the bar for plaintiffs" seeking access to the courts.
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"The handwriting is on the wall," said high court litigator Thomas Goldstein, co-chairman of the Supreme Court practice at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. As-applied challenges may be brought in both areas of the law, but they are unlikely to succeed, he predicted.
Baze was one of three major death penalty cases on the court's docket this term. In the child-rape death penalty case Kennedy v. Louisiana, 128 S. Ct. 2641 (2008) a 5-4 majority refused to extend the death penalty to nonhomicide crimes. And in the multilayered case of Medellin v. Texas, 128 S. Ct. 1346 (2008). Roberts, writing for a 6-3 majority, held that an international treaty was not binding on state courts and President Bush lacked the authority to require states to implement it by giving state court review to Mexican nationals on death rows whose treaty rights were violated.
Noting the 5-4 vote in the Louisiana case and the 7-2 vote in Baze with Kennedy in the majority in both Akin Gump's Goldstein suggested, "We are entering an era where the court is very bitterly divided in its approach to the death penalty. Baze was about how you do it. The five more conservative justices fundamentally have no problem with the system. The more liberal members have deep doubts and are persuaded by data about erroneous convictions. But they are picking their fights and are not actively trying to join the abolitionist movement."