Monthly Archive: December 2023

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor

by · Dec 3, 2023 1:48 am

Viet Dinh has this op-ed in the WSJ on Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who died Friday at the age of 93. Also in WSJ is this editorial, remembering her as a champion of federalism. And indeed she was. Her opinion for the court in Coleman v. Thompson begins, “This is a case about federalism.” As one of the few state court judges elevated to the high court, she had a major role in reining in the excesses of lower federal courts. Those courts often effectively negated the considered decisions of the highest state courts merely because they disagreed with them on debatable points, even though Congress has never given any federal court but the Supreme Court appellate jurisdiction over state courts. When the Supreme Court did get around to resolving the disagreement, it was not unusual for it to decide the state courts had been right and the lower federal courts wrong, especially in the Ninth Circuit.

When Congress went a big step further in that direction than the Supreme Court had done, and farther than Justice O’Connor thought was within the judicial power, she wrote the critical part of the opinion of the court in Williams v. Taylor, enforcing the most important reform as it was written and intended and upholding it as constitutional. Continue reading . . .

Shoplifting Stats

by · Dec 1, 2023 12:02 am

The Council on Criminal Justice has this report on shoplifting statistics. As we have noted on this blog many times and the report acknowledges, these stats have to be taken with caution because they only measure crimes reported to the police. When no-consequences policies lead people to believe (often correctly) that the police will not do anything anyway, reporting likely drops, thereby concealing an increase that may result from the same policies. Further, the report notes, we do not have the backup of the National Crime Victimization Survey that we have for crimes against individuals. The NCVS does not survey businesses.

With that big caveat, the report does have some interesting data. Among the “key takeaways”:

• Shoplifting incidents reported to police have rebounded since falling dramatically in 24 large American cities during 2020. But whether the overall tally is up or down compared with pre-pandemic levels depends on the inclusion of New York City. With New York’s numbers included, reported incidents were 16% higher (8,453 more incidents) in the study cities during the first half of 2023 compared to the first half of 2019; without New York, the number was 7% lower (-2,552 incidents).

The big drop during the pandemic was, obviously, because of the big drop in people going to stores and stores being open. What about the 2023 v. 2019 numbers? I’m skeptical that even without New York overall shoplifting is actually down. A drop is reporting is almost certainly a big factor there. Continue reading . . .