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Necessary Suffering?: Weighing Government And Prisoner Interests In Determining What Is Cruel And Unusual, Brittany Glidden
Necessary Suffering?: Weighing Government And Prisoner Interests In Determining What Is Cruel And Unusual, Brittany Glidden
Publications
Part I of this Article gives background on the origins of the Eighth Amendment doctrine concerning prison conditions and identifies persistent conflicts regarding the theoretical underpinnings for the doctrine. This history then provides context for Part II's description of the problems plaguing the current two-prong Eighth Amendment test. Part III includes a brief examination of the theoretical basis underlying other areas of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, including those challenging criminal sentences, fines, and method of execution cases. This review demonstrates that nearly all of these doctrines rely on a determination of the "excessiveness" of a given punishment, a proportionality analysis that …
Requiring The State To Justify Supermax Confinement For Mentally Ill Prisoners: A Disability Discrimination Approach, Brittany Glidden, Laura Rovner
Requiring The State To Justify Supermax Confinement For Mentally Ill Prisoners: A Disability Discrimination Approach, Brittany Glidden, Laura Rovner
Publications
The Eighth Amendment has long served as the traditional legal vehicle for challenging prison conditions, including long-term isolation or "supermax" confinement. As described by Hafemeister and George in their article, The Ninth Circle of Hell: An Eighth Amendment Analysis of Imposing Prolonged Supermax Solitary Confinement on Inmates with a Mental Illness, some prisoners with mental illness have prevailed in Eighth Amendment challenges to prolonged isolation. Yet an equal or greater number of these claims have been unsuccessful. This Essay considers why some of these cases fail, and suggests that one reason is that Eighth Amendment jurisprudence does not contain a …