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Portioning Punishment: Constitutional Limits On Successive And Excessive Penalties, Nancy J. King

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There has been a remarkable increase during the last decade in the imposition of overlapping civil, administrative, and criminal sanctions for the same misconduct, as well as a steady rise in the severity of those sanctions. In response, defendants have balked, arguing that legislators and the juries, judges, prosecutors, and regulators who apply legislatively authorized sanctions have overstepped the bounds of punishment permitted by the Constitution. Claiming that their penalties violate the Double Jeopardy, Due Process, Excessive Fines, and Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clauses in the Bill of Rights, civil and criminal defendants are prompting courts to reevaluate constitutional limits …