Monday, April 12, 2004

Scalia's goon squad

Dahlia Lithwick on the Supreme's police state tactics.

The point here isn't that federal marshals are bad people. Most of them are quite nice. The point is that, unlike most federal and state officials, they simply don't believe they answer to any body of law—they are pretty certain that they answer only to the justices. Imagine a police force answerable only to the mayor or federal prosecutors answerable only to John Ashcroft. The marshals have gone from providing security to the justices to being the court's own private militia.

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