POSC 130g 1st Edition Lecture 12 Current LectureRobert Yales: talk about the Supreme Court and the death penaltySupreme Court clerk for Justice Blackman, clerk for the 9th Circuit for Judge NorrisSupreme Court and Death PenaltyStruggle to abolish penalty: took hold in the 1960, group of academics and public interest lawyers looked at the way NAACP organized litigation campaign against schools adopted a similar campaign against death penalty. It was designed to chip away from the death penalty. in 1972, Furman v Georgia: US Supreme Court struck down death penalty statue in the United States, most consequential things that the US Supreme Court can ever due. It takes something that has been a part of American law and say that it is unconstitutional- created a deep philosophical dilemma 5th Amendment: shall not be deprived from life or liberty and due process, anticipated property that state might take a life, impose capital punishment, what is the juris prudence grounding for the decision?After 1972, in the states and legal thinkers and politicians, it was a big deal After four years, the Supreme Court reversed itself in 1976. By a narrow margin, they said the death penalty is okay under some circumstances- have a regulatory regime over the death penalty- campaign a litigation campaign to gum up the work, make it as difficult as possible, saidthat the liberal justices said they were going to help and do everything possible- enormously successful- in an extremely divided way, the conservative justices said that if they are going to play the obstruction game, they were going to change the rules. They worked with the underlying legal regime to deny obstruction of justice and set traps for the lawyers and people on death row who want to challenge conviction. Death penalty opposed on country that was racially discriminative- against death penalty, put on trial for murdering a white person was vastly more likely to be put on death penalty than murdering a black person- 14th amendment- can the death penalty be applied to equal protection clause?Court was not listening to these argumentsAnother issue that came up: question of innocence- if one told Supreme Court Justices in 1985, that there were a whole bunch of people on death row that were innocent, they would have laughed. This is true with DNA evidence, left with a strange set of institutional problems of the court. Live with the Supreme Court that all the issues come down to the vote of one justice in California.Death penalty jurisprudence in the country: now determined by a single swing vote between two factions of the court that the issue makes them not engage with each other. Federal Communications Commissionindependent agency and it unusual within the structure of the governmentFCC- independent agency and is a hybrid creature. Are independent agencies constitutional? 70 years ago decided it was constitutional Created by 1884- only one regulator, great advantage to the United States as broadband becomes the common medium for communication and FCC has various different methods that are converging under a single platform. The mission of the FCC for the last three years has been to try to universalize broadband network, bring broadband network to all Americans for an affordable price and to try and foster networks that will be world-leading in their ability to carry networks.FCC created a national broadband plan and tries and set out goals for the country. Also, it came out with policies for achieving thisThree areas in which US broadband isn’t where it used to be: three gaps: broadband employment- 20 million Americans don’t have access to broadband- so many things online that people don’t have access to, much larger group of Americans that have access to broadband butdon’t adopt it; one of the real problems of the country is the divideSome don’t adopt it because of cost, some don’t have the digital skills to use broadband or don’t understand how beneficial it is to their lives. The third gap is related to spectrum: the invisible infrastructure over which all the wireless networks operate. There is a limited amount of them devoted to broadband. 24 times as much burden on spectrum as a standard old fashion cell phone: smart phonesTablets use about 122 times as much spectrum as an old fashion cell phoneArea of spectrum: find usages of spectrum that are inefficient and reallocate those, an area thata great opportunity lies is broadcastingDeath Penalty: 120 different offenses for receiving death penalty in ChinaDNA can be used in a positive way to avoid the death penaltyRittle- asked for an apology, sterilizationhow courts evaluate expert testimony- based on Frye v United States (1923)- basic idea that evidence had to be based on sufficiently reliable research that it gained wide acceptance in the field. Established the test to base the question of what was scientific evidence on whether it had gained wide acceptance in the field, it was sufficiently reliableFry test represented a decision to delegate assessment to experts, delegates decision to experts of the question of whether a substantial majority of them accept the theory as valid, unlessthey do testimony based on the theory should be kept out of court, even if the attorney proffering the testimony can point to experimentation of the theory. As of 2010, some of the states were still following the fry test, in federal court- federal rules of evidence and under the federal rules of evidence, evidence is supposed to be used by courts unless it conflicts with rules. US adopted a new approach in rule 702, issue is reliability. The US adopts a different approach that replaces the general acceptance test with a new validation test- six parts.Fry Test was replaced with Six parts to validation testFirst: whether the proposition can be tested empiricallySecond: whether it has been testedThird: whether the theory has a known or potential rate of failureFourth: whether the proposition has been subject to peer review, other scientists in the community think it's accurateFifth: whether there are standards for using the methodologySixth: whether the methodology is generally accepted Instead of having a single validation, the new approach involves a more comprehensive approach to analyzing expertiseUS Supreme Court- for deciding on expert testimony- Daubert v. Meril Dow Pharmaceutical: new federal rules 702 replaced the fry test, shift since 1993 at least in federal courts. Some