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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Federal Death Penalty And The Constitutionality Of Capital Punishment, Scott W. Howe
The Federal Death Penalty And The Constitutionality Of Capital Punishment, Scott W. Howe
Scott W. Howe
The federal death penalty results in few executions but is central to the larger story of capital punishment in the United States. The explanation for its importance lies with its role in resolving the permissible uses of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment. In the last decade, federal statutes governing the federal death penalty seem to have exerted outsize influence with the Court in its development of “proportionality” doctrine, the rules by which the Justices confine the use of capital punishment under the Constitution. In rejecting capital punishment for retarded offenders, juvenile offenders and child rapists, the Court in …
The Eighth Amendment As A Warrant Against Undeserved Punishment, Scott Howe
The Eighth Amendment As A Warrant Against Undeserved Punishment, Scott Howe
Scott W. Howe
Should the Eighth Amendment prohibit all undeserved criminal convictions and punishments? There are grounds to argue that it must. Correlation between the level of deserts of the accused and the severity of the sanction represents the very idea of justice to most of us. We want to believe that those branded as criminals deserve blame for their conduct and that they deserve all of the punishments that they receive. The deserts limitation is also key to explaining the decisions in which the Supreme Court has rejected convictions or punishments as disproportional, including several major rulings in the new millennium. Yet, …
Repudiating The Narrowing Rule In Capital Sentencing, Scott W. Howe
Repudiating The Narrowing Rule In Capital Sentencing, Scott W. Howe
Scott W. Howe
This Article proposes a modest reform of Eighth Amendment law governing capital sentencing to spur major reform in the understanding of the function of the doctrine. The article urges that the Supreme Court should renounce a largely empty mandate known as the “narrowing” rule and the rhetoric of equality that has accompanied it. By doing so, the Court could speak more truthfully about the important but more limited function that its capital-sentencing doctrine actually pursues, which is to ensure that no person receives the death penalty who does not deserve it. The Court could also speak more candidly than it …