A Stitch in Haste

Whoa!

A legal principle which prevents people being tried for the same crime twice is being scrapped in England and Wales.

The ban on "double jeopardy", which has existed for around 800 years, will be consigned to history from Monday.

The Court of Appeal can now quash an acquittal and order a retrial when "new and compelling" evidence is produced. ...The change will apply retrospectively, so someone could face a second trial if evidence such as DNA material, new witnesses or a confession came to light.
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A Home Office spokesman said: "It is important the public should have full confidence in the ability of the criminal justice system to deliver justice. "This can be undermined if it is not possible to convict offenders for very serious crimes where there is strong and viable evidence of their guilt."
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The reforms -- which also allow hearsay evidence to be admissible in court -- come under the new Criminal Justice act.
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However, it will only be possible to retry an acquitted person once.

Do I remember hearing, or reading, Justice Scalia including in his general "foreign law is irrelevant" jurisprudential philosophy an extra-special smackdown to those who claim a heightened persuasiveness to English law as it exists today as opposed to how it existed at the time of the Founding?

While I disagree with his general attitude toward foreign law (see his dissents in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), and Roper v. Simmons, No. 03-0633), to the extent he said that, he's dead-on accurate. This is utterly terrifying.

Thank goodness we have the ban on douple jeopardy sanctified by the Fifth Amendment, which never, ever gets ignored -- does it?