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blue bits. red rocks.
Tuesday 29 April 2008

…two 5-to-4 decisions extended the broad deference the Court has accorded in recent years to the military’s power over its personnel. The first, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, appeared to shield the Government and responsible officials completely from liability for their role in secret experiments in the 1950’s in which hundreds of unsuspecting soldiers were given the mind-altering drug LSD to see how they would react. Case Involved LSD The Court threw out a suit by a former Army sergeant who said he was an unwitting subject of the LSD experiments in 1958, and that he experienced hallucinations, memory loss and violent behavior that wrecked his marriage. The Court ruled that he had no right to compensation even if his allegations were true. The second decision, by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, overruled a precedent set in 1969 when the liberal majority under Chief Justice Earl Warren had held that service members accused of crimes unrelated to their military duties have a constitutional right to be tried by civilian juries rather than by military courts-martial. High Court Bars Suits by Those in the Military

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