Last week, instead of posting here or, indeed, doing anything constructive during that time, I got into a debate with some people on Rightwingnews.com.

They were getting into a huff because the Supreme Court has been mentioning foreign laws in some recent decisions. But the way the article was built was:
<ol><li>To quote some ridiculous foreign cases and laws
<li>To mention Justice Ginsburg recently defended the practice of quoting foreign laws in the decisions
<li>To suggest that:
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There is no mechanism for any legislative control of which foreign laws are used.

If I understand this correctly, in essence, there will be two sets of laws. One will contain laws created by domestic legislation. The second will be foreign laws, of which the domestic legislative branch will have no part of creating. For all intents and purposes, they are introduced into our legal system ex nihilo.
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This is but one part of a general fear among conservatives that the U.S. will somehow become invaded by foreign legal norms, which are undoubtedly the first talon in the claw of International Communism (perhaps the New World Order? Or something.)

To say that "there is no mechanism for any legislative conrtol" of the judiciary…which Constitution are you reading? Judges are partisanly appointed at the Federal level and elected at others. The fact that the Constitution grants people civil rights (including, and I just have to come right out and say it, freedom <b>from</b> religion) and that courts are bound to respect those rights <b>drives conservatives crazy</b>.

Anyway, it turns out that what most of the rightwingnews readers were upset about was the Roper v. Simmons case, where the court banned states from executing prisoners who were under the age of 18 on the day of the crime. When one of the sections referred to foreign practices regarding executing juveniles, some sort of flag was raised and conservatives started champing at the bit for a reduction in the separation of powers. Here's an excerpt from Roper v. Simmons:
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"Our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18 finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty. This reality does not become controlling, for the task of interpreting the Eighth Amendment remains our responsibility. Yet at least from the time of the Court's decision in Trop [referring to TROP v. DULLES, 356 U.S. 86 (1958) –DJW], the Court has referred to the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive for its interpretation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishments."
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Bravely refusing to read the document they spent hours criticizing, many posters on rightwingnews continued to maintain that there was no American justification for setting 18 as the minimum age, even though Roper v. Simmons reads, in part
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The evidence of national consensus against the death penalty for juveniles is similar, and in some respects parallel, to the evidence Atkins held sufficient to demonstrate a national consensus against the death penalty for the mentally retarded. When Atkins was decided, 30 States prohibited the death penalty for the mentally retarded. This number comprised 12 that had abandoned the death penalty altogether, and 18 that maintained it but excluded the mentally retarded from its reach. 536 U. S., at 313-315. By a similar calculation in this case, 30 States prohibit the juvenile death penalty, comprising 12 that have rejected the death penalty altogether and 18 that maintain it but, by express provision or judicial interpretation, exclude juveniles from its reach.
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At any rate, we boiled down our argument to statements like "While you don