IN ROPER V. SIMMONS, the recent Supreme Court case in which a 5-4 majority ruled that it was ”cruel and unusual” to execute anyone under the age of 18, Justice Antonin Scalia uncorked one of his trademark scathing dissents. But while his colleagues took the brunt of the attack, Scalia also devoted a few pointed paragraphs to skewering a major scholarly group: the American Psychological Association.
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The APA had filed an amicus brief asking that the court ban the execution of 16- and 17-year-olds (a Court decision from 1989 had already established 16 as the minimum age for the death penalty), arguing that impulsiveness, susceptibility to peer pressure, and even physically underdeveloped brains made adolescents less culpable for their actions than legal adults. ”At ages 16 and 17,” the brief emphatically stated, ”adolescents, as a group, are not yet mature in ways that affect their decision-making.”
Yet as Scalia archly observed, ”The APA has previously taken precisely the opposite position before this very Court.”
It is, as the article notes, more nuanced than what Scalia portrays. It astounds me that Scalia would put in writing such ignorance for scientific research. I would’ve thought a clerk would’ve researched his opinion a bit more before allowing him to write such an opinion. Complex behavioral issues — especially regarding the teen years — aren’t explained away just because a professional association takes a stand that differs from a previous stand in an unrelated case.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 13 Mar 2005
