The people beg to differ.
Well, this one does, anyway.
“This proposition has been presented to the Supreme Court on a number of occasions and repeatedly rejected by the court, we hold that the continued opportunity to exonerate oneself throughout the natural course of one’s life is not a right so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental,” the appellate judges wrote.
—From the New York Times, via the incomparable TalkLeft (here, and also here).
We do, indeed, have a fundamental right to challenge our own deaths, as ordered by a system that has been demonstrated time and again to be fundamentally flawed if not actively corrupt. The idea that this right is not “so rooted” in my traditions or conscience, or yours, that it at some point runs out because it is too expensive or too tiresome or too embarrassing to allow it to be pursued, that proof of guilt is a procedural point satisfied by properly filled out paperwork, and not our best, most strenuous, most exacting efforts to find out fundamentally what happened, and how, and why—that, in a word, is insulting. Somebody really ought to step up to the plate and do something, take a stand in favor of life over process, justice over expediency, getting it right over getting it done…
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