Justices, 5-4, Tell California to Cut Prisoner Population

Wow. This is a very big decision from the Supreme Court enforcing the integrity of the Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, and ordering the state of California to reduce its prison population or relocate prisoners to improve conditions. Two dissenters in the ruling, Scalia and Alito, shamefully conjured images of rampant criminal activity to result from the decision. This will no doubt spark a week or two of histrionic yelpings across the spectrum of the mainstream media, so we should all brace ourselves for the onslaught. I believe this is an important decision primarily because it reinforces a collective sense of morality, a system based on real-world principles, that has been sorely lacking in our country for quite some time. It gives me hope that we can reclaim some of the integrity that our system has discarded in pursuit of expediency over the past few decades.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/24/us/24scotus.html?partner=rss&emc=rss