At ThinkProgress, Ian Millhiser writes about the history of the Federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals when it comes to appeals based on claims of rejecting or selecting jurors based on race. As he notes, this is a practice strictly forbidden by the Supreme Court, yet the Fifth seems to be blind to the problem, possibly even deliberately blind:
But even if the Supreme Court does hand down a swift, summary reversal of the Fifth Circuit’s error in Chamberlin, it is far from clear that the judges on this appeals court will take the hint. For three decades, the Fifth Circuit has behaved as if racial jury discrimination simply does not exist in the states of Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. It’s behaved this way, moreover, despite the fact that the Supreme Court explicitly stated in the second Miller-El case that there is “widely known evidence of the general policy of the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office to exclude black [jury pool] members from juries at the time Miller-El’s jury was selected.”
Ian’s secondary title [what is that called, anyways?] is striking, if perhaps a trifle inaccurate:
What good is a constitution if judges refuse to follow it?
No doubt a question conservatives have asked in frustration in reaction to liberal judges “making law.” But it’s a question that disturbs the heart, because we run this nation under Law, and to find out that an entire circuit is ignoring a SCOTUS ruling is a bit earth-shaking. This may call for some investigation. It’s an interesting article.
