Use of a mentally ill person's involuntary confession is antithetical to the notion of fundamental fairness embodied in the due process clause.
Interpretation
Confessions obtained under duress from a mentally ill person are unfair and unjust.
William J. Brennan highlights a critical issue in the legal system regarding the treatment of mentally ill individuals. He argues that using an involuntary confession from such a person contradicts the principles of fairness and justice that are fundamental to the due process clause, emphasizing the need for protecting the rights of the vulnerable in society.
In practice
During a discussion on legal reforms, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of fairness in the justice system.
If our free society is to endure, those who govern must recognize human dignity and accept the enforcement of constitutional limitations on their power conceived by the Framers . . . . Such recognition will not come from a technical understanding of the organs of government, or the new forms of wealth they administer. It requires something different, something deeper-a personal confrontation with the wellsprings of our society.
Law cannot stand aside from the social changes around it.
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.
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.
The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to 'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.
Congress acknowledged that society's accumulated myths and fears about disability and disease are as handicapping as are the physical limitations that flow from actual impairment.
God doesn't seek for golden vessels, and does not ask for silver ones, but He must have clean ones.
Dreams and restless thoughts came flowing to him from the river, from the twinkling stars at night, from the sun's melting rays. Dreams and a restlessness of the soul came to him.
Ye shall only have foes to be hated; but not foes to be despised: ye must be proud of your foes.
In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
The acceptance of certain realities doesn't preclude idealism. It can lead to certain breakthroughs.
John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
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