Skip to main content

Summarize the article "Rethinking Proportionality Under The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause" at...

The article proposes that proportionality reviews are crucial in efforts to correctly interpret the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause. Additionally, proportionality highlights a retributive rather than a restorative concept of justice. Thus, to quantify excessiveness, one would need to consult prevailing moral standards rather than popular, shifting definitions of cruelty.


This article proposes that new approaches to proportionality would allow the Supreme Court to nullify death penalty verdicts for non-homicidal cases and to restrict life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders. The article states that a proportionality review is critical because the Supreme Court has failed to furnish a rational definition of proportionality and to employ concrete solutions that ensure proportionality.


In the past, the Supreme Court often rejected death penalties or life sentences even when there was no clear societal consensus against them. In these instances, the Court relied on a fictionalized consensus to justify its own arbitrary verdicts. At other times, the Court relied on its own independent judgment to define cruel and unusual punishment. In short, the Court lacked a definitive standard for measuring excessiveness.


As history shows, the original Framers interpreted the Eighth amendment in light of prior practice. Later, nineteenth-century law experts supported the notion that the Punishment Clauses rejected both excessive and barbaric retribution. However, they based this support on entrenched definitions of excessiveness. Basically, the Court needs a clear standard for defining "cruel and unusual punishment," a standard that must not be influenced by shifting public opinion, the Court's independent judgment, or the machinations of legislators.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...
Post a Comment
Read more

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...
Post a Comment
Read more