Like the universe, the U.S. Constitution gets a bit wacky on the margins. Just last week, for example, the Second Circuit (our local federal appeals court) upheld the constitutionality of U.S. officials’ warrantless search of the home of a U.S. citizen living in Kenya by finding that the second half of the Fourth Amendment — the part that requires warrants — simply did not apply. Had the same search occurred in New York, all parties agree, it would have been unconstitutional. The decision itself seems quite reasonable; what authority does a U.S. judge have to issue a warrant for a search in Kenya? Surely Alexander Hamilton was not anticipating such an application of the Fourth Amendment, but neither was he anticipating criminal investigations in Africa.

By Brendan Mahan As someone who supports broad civil liberties, I find the recent passage of state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage deeply disturbing. And I find our continued reliance on the government to control marriage somewhat bizarre. I see no reason to think that marriage is an area where the government has particular competence or where individuals particularly lack it. People are perfectly capable of defining the terms of their relationships in other contexts, and the fact that marriage is a relationship of great personal significance suggests it should have less governmental control, not more.

By Greg Demers As independent voters ready themselves for tomorrow’s election, they will inevitably flock to the websites of Barack Obama and John McCain to pin down the differences between the candidates and, hopefully, help solidify their decisions. While the vast majority of topics on these sites overlap, there is one issue that is strikingly absent from Barack Obama’s website: judicial philosophy.

By Kate Rykken Over the next five weeks, 10 prisoners face the death penalty in Texas. Their crimes include the murders of an eleven-year-old girl, a sleeping elderly man, a middle-aged widow, and the rape and murder of a seven-year-old girl. Regardless of where these crimes were committed, they are heinous and incomprehensible. Yet, a person committing these same crimes in New York would instead spend the rest of his life in jail. Texas sentences and executes its prisoners at a rate that far outpaces every other state in the United States, while New York has outlawed the death penalty.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin calls her critics “haters.” If a person has haters, she’s likely successful, and the quantity of her haters may serve as a measure of how successful she is. Judging by the hate, Palin is a pretty big deal. Liberals, Democrats, even witches hate Palin. She’s so awesome, it’s not just people that hate on her; entire movements, sensibilities and even reality hates on her. Among the haters: the theory of evolution, the Feminist movement, global warming, and Roe v. Wade. Since this is a legal column, I’ll focus on the latter, and the implications that a McCain-Palin win may have on abortion law.

We all have the right to vote in Student Assembly elections. But do we all have an equal right to vote? Put another way, does a Cornell student’s voting power depend on the college in which he or she is enrolled? Surprisingly, the answer is “yes.”