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Comparison To Criminal Sanctions In The Constitutional Review Of Punitive Damages, Colleen P. Murphy

San Diego Law Review

This Article focuses on the third guidepost announced in BMW v. Gore for reviewing whether the amount of punitive damages award is so excessive as to violate due process, specifically, comparing punitive damages to criminal sanctions. Part I of the article examine the Supreme Court's language in several cases about the relevance of criminal sanctions to the question whether a punitive award is constitutionally excessive. It criticizes the Campbell effort to distinguish between civil and criminal penalties under the third guidepost. Part II suggests that the third guidepost, in theory, wrongly constrains courts from imposing sanctions above those created by …