Medellin v. Texas, Glyptodonts and Other Curiosities.

It is so nice that just when I am wanting to think about international law, the Supremes decide to write about the subject.

The Supreme Court decided Medellin v. Texas this week.

Two teenage girls, 14 and 16, who were trying to walk home were raped and murdered by Jose Ernesto Medellin and other members of the "Black and White" gang. As Chief Justice Roberts writes, "Medellín was personally responsible for strangling at least one of the girls with her own shoelace."

Mr. Medellin was tried in state court in Texas, convicted and sentenced to death.

The fact that brought this case to the Supreme Court: Medellin was born in Mexico, although he had lived in the United States since preschool.

This gave the Republic of Mexico an interest in the case. The "evolving sense of dignity" that allows or does not allow the death penalty has evolved further in Mexico than it has in the United States. Every so often the U.S. Supremes check in on how far our sense of dignity has evolved. Fairly recently it evolved so we no longer execute children or the retarded, but it has not yet evolved far enough to not execute anybody. We may have evolved far enough that the current form of lethal injection is not allowed, but we should not know this until later this year.

I know some of you evolutionists will be surprised that human dignity evolves at such a rapid rate in the United States. Apparently the mechanism is not an form of natural selection, but is more Lamarckian in that a desire to evolve can produce the result.

One of the first signs of the evolution of the sense of dignity in the United States was a 1910 case in which a soldier named Weems was exiled and made stateless because he went absent without leave. The Supremes then noted that this exile business may be grounded in history, but saw we had evolved. Since that time, our sense of dignity has changed. Sometimes we evolve more rapidly than others.

I don't know if our evolving sense of dignity can also lower the standards for dignity. Just as natural selection can respond to the environment to produce taller creatures, it can also select shorter creatures. Those prehistoric armadillos that used to weigh 4000 pounds are all gone, but the little horses have evolved into bigger ones. Think mouse vs. nutria.

When the Supremes talk about it, usually they have boasted that our evolving sense of dignity has evolved in favor of being more shocked at torture or different forms of death.

However, I am somewhat concerned it might evolve in the other direction. I can imagine the Chief Justice reporting, "We know waterboarding was once considered cruel and unusual punishment in the United States. However, our sense of dignity has now evolved as a result of years of everybody being scared to death by the talk of terrorism. Therefore, although this was once cruel and unusual punishment, it is not any more. We will check back in a few years on whether being drawn and quartered and shoving bamboo under the fingernails are cruel or unusual."

Mexico and the United States have entered into some treaties. Each country apparently desires to protect its citizens from the barbarity of the other's legal system. The United States had captured 51 Mexicans, including Medellin, who we want to kill. Mexico went to the international court in the Hague and said, hey, we had a deal cut in Vienna, you are supposed to notify us when you arrest Mexicans so we can help them out.

The Supremes this week say, as far as I can understand, "Sure, we signed on to that treaty and we agree to the jurisdiction of the international court. The International Court of Justice can tell us when we are acting illegally, they just can't make us do anything about it. If Texas courts don't want to follow this ruling, they don't have to. And just because President Bush says they should have to follow it, they still don't have to. So there."