On the heels of major decisions about same­sex marriage and health care, the Supreme Court closed the term that ended last week with one more extremely contentious case, Glossip v. Gross, which was about the death penalty. The narrow issue in the case was the legality of Oklahoma’s most recent method of lethal injection, using a drug called midazolam. The court upheld that execution method in a 5­-to-­4 ruling, concluding that the challengers had not done enough to show that it was riskier than the alternatives. But the extensive opinions in the case confronted fundamental questions about the place of the death penalty in our constitutional system.

Marking the contentiousness of the issue, four justices announced their competing opinions aloud in the courtroom. It is uncommon for more than one justice to speak in a particular case. Four is almost unheard­ of.

The separate opinions of Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer, in particular, are worthy of note, as they express starkly opposing views of the death penalty’s place under our Constitution. Justice Breyer basically called for the abolition of the death penalty, while Justice Scalia argued that the Constitution itself protected the death penalty from judicial invalidation. But both views are misguided; the best position lies in between them.

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