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.
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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.
Let us have compassion for those under chastisement. Alas, who are we ourselves? Who am I and who are you? Whence do we come and is it quite certain that we did nothing before we were born? This earth is not without some resemblance to a gaol. Who knows but that man is a victim of divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so constituted that one senses punishment everywhere.
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In the morning, when the nothing vase casts a something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that?
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If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use psychochemicals. Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first_x000D_ century. Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelic drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides_x000D_ telescopes are unnatural.
All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.
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