A young Federalist who has already perused Justice Kennedy’s opinion in the death penalty case e-mails with two observations. First, the Court cites two unratified treaties in reaching its decision, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Criminal Court Convention. Any citation to the latter as authority is quite outrageous. Not only has the U.S. not ratified the treaty, but the U.S. is not even a party; President Bush withdrew from the treaty in his first term. (Yes, Shannon, Kennedy’s opinion may be even worse than you think.) I’ll have to give these portions of the opinion a close look. Second, somewhat unexpectedly the Chief Justice joined the dissent even though his vote was not necessary to break a tie. Also, here are the dissents by O’Connor and Scalia.