A punitive damages award, based in part on a jury's desire to punish a defendant for harming nonparties, amounts to a taking of property from the defendant without due process. A judgment rejecting a tobacco company's challenges to a punitive damages award against it in a negligence and deceit case is vacated where the Oregon Supreme Court applied the wrong constitutional standard when considering the tobacco company's appeal.
-- Philip Morris USA v. Williams
FWIW, the newbies on the Supreme Court joined in the ongoing practice of the Supremes regulating punitive damage awards. Given the procedural tone of the case, the ruling is arguably limited, though in such a way that "punitive regulator" Stevens found problematic. The question, though important, is a bit nice given how the majority split the baby. All the same, Stevens' dissent is interesting on broader grounds, including respecting the nature of punitive damages (cf. fines). Anyway, interesting breakdown of justices as well.
So long as the Executive can convince an independent Article III habeas judge that it has not acted unlawfully, it may continue to detain those alien enemy combatants who pose a continuing threat during the active engagement of the United States in the war on terror. See id. at 488 (Kennedy, J., concurring in the judgment); cf. Hamdi, 542 U.S. at 518-19. But it must make that showing and the detainees must be allowed a meaningful opportunity to respond.
-- Judge Rogers, dissenting re dismissal of pending habeas corpus petitions of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees.
Meanwhile, this is an impressive dissent, one that just might become law of the land, at least in part. The tendency of the majority to interpret liberty narrowingly, acting like the House of Lords (interpreting old English case law) along the way is downright dumb. Interesting use by the dissent of the logic that the habeas provision is a constitutional limit on Congress, not a security of rights per se. I think it does both and the dissent's cite of Federalist No. 84 suggests so too.
Meanwhile, detainees continue to rot.