As I discuss more fully in this Bench Memos post, the Supreme Court this morning issued an order denying the state of Louisiana’s petition for rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana, the wild ruling last June in which the Court held, by a 5-4 vote, that imposition of the death penalty for the crime of raping a child violates the Eighth Amendment. Justice Scalia, joined by the Chief Justice, also voted against rehearing on the ground that the majority was just making it up anyway and didn’t really care about whether or not a national consensus existed against the death penalty for the crime of raping a child.