POLITICS AND THE LAW
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 7/1/02]
To purists and legalists, who view the law as a kind of sacred undertaking, and its judges as latter-day priests, the last weeks of the last term of the US Supreme Court must have been mighty disconcerting.
For it is a rare thing for a Court to reverse itself, to announce to the nation and the world, that they committed judicial error in the past. It is so extraordinary, that when it occurs, one is compelled to address it.
That rare occurrence can be seen in the Court's 6-3 decision in the Atkins v. Virginia case, where the Court held that the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution forbade the execution of the mentally retarded. The Atkins decision reversed the 1989 Penry v. Lynaugh decision, which held that there was no "national consensus" against the execution of the mentally ill, and that it therefore did not offend the Eighth Amendment to do so.
What happened in the intervening 13 years between Atkins and Penry?
What happened, in a word, is politics.
In Penry, the Court looked to legislative judgments as "the clearest and most reliable objective evidence" of public, and indeed, political opinion. As there were few (if any) states that forbade the execution of the mentally ill/retarded at the same time Penry was decided, it wasn't unconstitutional (forget the obvious flaw in this reasoning, that it made the nation's highest court subservient to state legislators, for the determination of what violated the uS Constitution!).
In the interim period, over a dozen states outlawed the practice, and this, in addition to the bristling hostility of the international community to the execution of the mentally infirm, sufficed to move the court to reverse itself.
This is indeed significant, for it instructs us in the power of the political in an area that was hotly contested -- the death penalty.
The question isn't what a difference a decade makes, but what a difference organizing makes. Anti-death penalty groups from coast to coast, have organized, protested, and lobbied in state houses for state and regional bans on the execution of the mentally retarded, and that strategy has apparently paid off.
The great Swedish-American socialist labor leader, Joe Hill (born Hillstrom), faced with the awful shadow of the hangman in Utah, told his friends, in no uncertain terms, "Don't mourn for me. Organize!"
That lesson, issued in the 19-teens, remains valuable today.
Organize!
If you are a labor leader, a church person, a butcher, baker, or candle-stick maker, it is not enough for people to simply accept what the courts of the land have said. Organize!
If you are an anti-death penalty activist, learn this lesson well: Organize!
Reversals are indeed rare, but recent history teaches us that they are not impossible, if people remember to: Organize!
The Court did not one day come to an epiphany that the execution of the mentally ill was a 'bad thing.' They saw the winds of change blowing. The winds from Europe. The winds from across America. The winds of people organizing.
Blow on.
Organize!
Text © copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
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