Talk:Palko v. Connecticut

Untitled

In the second paragraph of this article, I suggest changing the "2" to the MLA-appropriate "two," in accordance with their policy that numbers that use two or less words should be spelled out. If no one objects within a couple of days, I will make the change myself, but remain open for discussion. User:Oblyter8ed 21:48, 30 March 2007 (UTC) Oblyter8ed

Since this article isn't getting much attention, and has no developed talk page, I figured the change is minor enough to make myself. If anyone would like to change it again, pelase respond. 65.102.38.113 02:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Case Opinions

Hughes is not in the Case Opinions section --Jordan042 20:43, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Not "overruled"

I suggest that the last line in the box on the right side of the page, and the section about Later Developments, the word "overruled" be changed to abrogated. Here is why: when Justice Cardozo wrote Palko, he did not say that the Double Jeopardy Clause is not incorporated in the 14th. He said, in effect, this case is not the right time for us to answer the question of whether or not the Double Jeopardy Clause is incorporated in the 14th. The answer to that question will have to wait to some future case in which a person who was put on trial once and that first trial was fair and did not have any substantial legal errors was then eventually put on trial again. Once we see a case like that, we will address the question of whether the Double Jeopardy Clause is incorporated. What appears in the Court's opinion is: "Is that kind of double jeopardy to which the statute has subjected him a hardship so acute and shocking that our polity will not endure it? Does it violate those "fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions"? The answer surely must be 'no.' What the answer would have to be if the state were permitted after a trial free from error to try the accused over again or to bring another case against him, we have no occasion to consider. We deal with the statute before us, and no other. The state is not attempting to wear the accused out by a multitude of cases with accumulated trials. It asks no more than this, that the case against him shall go on until there shall be a trial free from the corrosion of substantial legal error. This is not cruelty at all, nor even vexation in any immoderate degree." Furthermore, when Thurgood Marshall wrote Benton v. Maryland, he did not say that Palko was wrongly decided and it clearly must be overruled. Marshall said something a little bit vague: "[W]e today find that the double jeopardy prohibition of the Fifth Amendment represents a fundamental ideal in our constitutional heritage, and that it should apply to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. Insofar as it is inconsistent with this holding, Palko v. Connecticut is overruled."