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Constitutional Law & Criminal Law - The Eighth Amendment - The Juvenile Death Penalty: A Premature Decision Over Teenage Immaturity? Roper V. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005)., J. Blake Byrd
University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review
The final clause of the Eighth Amendment is the source of this nation's prohibition on unconstitutional punishment. Today, the Supreme Court's evolving-standard on the prohibition on unconstitutional punishment has two steps: The Court (1) looks at objective indicia of societal consensus against a particular practice and (2) ultimately uses its independent judgment to analyze whether the punishment is proportional to the offender's mental state and category of crime. There is tension within the Court, however, because some members believe that the evolving-standards jurisprudence is mistaken, and they fervently reject a proportionality analysis.
The United States has a long history of …