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Garrett Epps

Garrett Epps is a contributing editor at The American Prospect. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and a professor of law at the University of Baltimore. His most recent book is Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America.

Recent Articles

Now Is the Law of Their Discontent

Garrett EppsMar 23, 2012
(Flickr/S.E.B.)

To paraphrase Ecclesiastes, of the making of many briefs there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

Precedents for the Unprecedented

Garrett EppsMar 23, 2012
(Flickr/thesussman)

Here are quotes from an anguished brief filed with the United States Supreme Court: “the present statute . . .departs markedly from any prior statute sustained as an exercise of the commerce power. . . .” It “is incapable of being regarded as within the scope of any of the other statutes or decisions.” Further, “there is no statutory precedent to support the Solicitor General's position in this case.” That position “is founded on a concept of the interstate commerce clause which has never been recognized by the Courts. While the wisdom of legislation is a matter for the Congress it is within the Court's proper prerogative to look with deep concern at an assertion of power never heretofore upheld.”

The History of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" Law

Garrett EppsMar 21, 2012
(Flickr/seweccentric)

Seventeen years ago, in Springfield, Oregon, a local mechanic went into a fast-food restaurant, walked up behind a man eating lunch, and shot him to death in the back of the head.

A local grand jury refused to indict the shooter. There had been no altercation, no sign that the man shot was carrying a weapon. But the shooter believed that the victim had threatened his daughter. And the dead man was, in the words of the local district attorney, “a violent man, a drug dealer by trade.”

Maybe the shooter should have left it to the police, the district attorney said, but the victim should also have “moderated his behavior.”

Throwaway People

Garrett EppsMar 21, 2012
(Flickr/Tim Pearce)

“You're making a 14-year-old throwaway person.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s phrase fell into the Supreme Court chamber with an ominous clang, like the sound of metal doors slamming.

Not surprisingly, Kent Holt, an assistant Arkansas attorney general, tried to mute the clang. Speaking of Evan Miller, who committed murder at 14 and is now challenging his sentence of life without parole, Holt said, “I'd respectfully disagree that he's a throwaway person.” 

“What hope does he have?” Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked. 

Well, Holt responded, he could ask for a commutation of his life-without-parole sentence. He cited a 1979 Arkansas case stating that 30 such requests had been granted in the five years before.

The ACA v. the Supreme Court

Garrett EppsMar 13, 2012
(Flickr/Mark Fischer)

This is the first of a series of posts looking at the arguments in the upcoming health-care case. 

Judges, whatever they like to pretend, rarely decide cases on logical application of argument and case law. They do think about those things, but usually only after they’ve made up their minds—and they tend to make up their minds based on unformed emotional reactions to the questions raised by a case.  

So it’s worth asking about the emotional subtext in the minimum coverage (or “individual mandate”) aspect of the Affordable Care Act case, which will be argued in late March. This is the one issue that has stirred public fear—Cheese it, it’s the Broccoli cops!—and Justices are members of the public.

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