Civil Commitment, Part 2

My last post was about the so-called Civil Commitment clause of the Adam Walsh Act. Appears that the US Supreme Court is about to hear a case which challenges the clause as unconstitutional.

The case is an interesting one in part because of the ideological coalition that opposes the current law. Liberals, conservatives, and libertarians alike have bristled at the dangerous precedent they think the law represents. The high court should overturn the "blatant government overreach," Randy Barnett and David Rittgers, both from the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote in an amicus brief.

Supreme Court to Hear Sex Offender Imprisonment Case. The comments are also worth reading.

Matt Mangino, a former District Attorney from Pennsylvania, calls Civil Commitment, and the current challenge to it, a "constitutional ripple effect." Read on:

Kansas Solicitor General Stephen McAllister says civil commitment has to be linked to a mental abnormality or condition. But a lot of people in prison are deeply disturbed. There are drug addicts, kleptomaniacs, vicious sociopaths. So why not commit them too once they have completed their prison terms?

"Constitutionally, it might be possible," to extend the rationale for civil commitment to other kinds of crimes, McAllister says. "I don't have a constitutionally limiting line for what kinds of mental disorders might be permissible and what [might] not. If they lead to danger to others, potentially, they could be covered under such a law."