Supreme Court Begins Term With Crime and Punishment

The first Monday in October this year is also the first day of Rosh Hashana -- so oral arguments for the new Supreme Court term will begin instead on a Tuesday. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was reputedly unsympathetic to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s request to turn the court’s Christmas party into a holiday party, must be spinning in his grave. But Rehnquist’s former law clerk, Chief Justice John Roberts, is apparently more ecumenical -- and it’s a different era, with three Jews on the court and a fourth nominated to it.

Nevertheless, the Jewish New Year is two days long (or, one long day according to the rabbis). And perhaps it’s appropriate that on the day when, according to tradition, God sits in judgment of his flock, the court will consider one case about crime and one about punishment. The first is about whether it’s federal bank fraud to rip off a customer rather than the bank itself. And the other, more subtle case is about whether double jeopardy allows charges to be retried when the original jury acquittal was logically irrational.