The Framers Knew That Liberty Is A

Clerks Get Into The Damnedest Wrangles--which Is The Way They Help Me.

It Is Tempting To Pretend That Minorities On Death Row Share A Fate In No Way Connected To Our Own, That Our Treatment Of Them Sounds No Echoes Beyond The Chambers In Which They Die. Such An Illusion Is Ultimately Corrosive, For The Reverberations Of Injustice Are Not So Easily Confined.

There Can Be No Doubt That Our Nation Has Had A Long And Unfortunate History Of Sex Discrimination. Traditionally, Such Discrimination Was Rationalized By An Attitude Of "romantic Paternalism" Which, In Practical Effect, Put Women, Not On A Pedestal, But In A Cage.

At Bottom, The Battle Has Been Waged On Moral Grounds. The Country Has Debated Whether A Society For Which The Dignity Of The Individual Is The Supreme Value Can, Without A Fundamental Inconsistency, Follow The Practice Of Deliberately Putting One Of Its Members To Death.

Debate On Public Issues Should Be Uninhibited, Robust And Wide-open And That...may Well Include Vehement, Caustic, And Sometimes Unpleasantly Sharp Attacks On Government And Public Officials.