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Juvenile Law Commons

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Articles 1 - 10 of 10

Full-Text Articles in Juvenile Law

Juvenile Solitary Confinement And The Eighth Amendment, Taylor R. Graves Apr 2022

Juvenile Solitary Confinement And The Eighth Amendment, Taylor R. Graves

Honors Thesis

This literature review examines the practice of juvenile solitary confinement, applies the United States Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, argues that the practice should be declared unconstitutional as a violation of the Eighth Amendment, and calls for a categorical ban. The Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment states, “nor [shall] cruel and unusual punishments [be] inflicted.” U.S. Const. amend. VIII. Juvenile solitary confinement is cruel and unusual, in violation of the Eighth Amendment, because juveniles are different. The United States Supreme Court has long recognized that juveniles should not be held to the same standards of …


Lengthy Minimum Parole Requirements: A Denial Of Hope, Heather Walker Apr 2021

Lengthy Minimum Parole Requirements: A Denial Of Hope, Heather Walker

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Using the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, the Supreme Court has made sweeping changes to juvenile sentencing in the last fifteen years. The Court has stated that mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole and life sentences without the possibility of parole for non-homicide offenders are unconstitutional. Nevertheless, there are still unanswered questions in juvenile sentencing. One under-researched aspect of this is the role that lengthy minimum parole requirements play in the constitutionality of juvenile sentencing. This type of sentencing lacks express legislative support, it does not have a legitimate penological justification, and it denies juveniles …


Eighteen Is Not A Magic Number: Why The Eighth Amendment Requires Protection For Youth Aged Eighteen To Twenty-Five, Tirza A. Mullin Jan 2020

Eighteen Is Not A Magic Number: Why The Eighth Amendment Requires Protection For Youth Aged Eighteen To Twenty-Five, Tirza A. Mullin

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The Eighth Amendment protects a criminal defendant’s right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. This Note argues that any punishment of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds is cruel and unusual without considering their youthfulness at every stage of the criminal process, and that it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment for these youths to be automatically treated as fully-developed adults. This Note will explore in depth how juveniles differ from adults, both socially and scientifically, and how the criminal justice system fails every youth aged eighteen- to twenty-five by subjecting them to criminal, rather than juvenile, court without considering their …


A Meaningful Opportunity For Release: Resentencing Hearings For Juvenile Offenders Sentenced To Life Without Parole Following Aiken V. Byars, Robert M. Dudek Apr 2017

A Meaningful Opportunity For Release: Resentencing Hearings For Juvenile Offenders Sentenced To Life Without Parole Following Aiken V. Byars, Robert M. Dudek

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.


Random If Not "Rare"? The Eighth Amendment Weaknesses Of Post-Miller Legislation, Kimberly Thomas Mar 2017

Random If Not "Rare"? The Eighth Amendment Weaknesses Of Post-Miller Legislation, Kimberly Thomas

Articles

First, this Article surveys the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to analogize life without parole for juveniles to the death penalty for adults, and discusses the Eighth Amendment law regarding the parameters around death penalty statutory schemes. Second, this Article examines the state legislative response to Miller, and scrutinizes it with the Court's Eighth Amendment death penalty law-and the states' responses to this case law-in mind. This Article highlights the failure of juvenile homicide sentencing provisions to: 1) narrow offenses that are eligible for life without parole sentences; 2) further limit, once a guilty finding is made, the categories of …


“Criminal Records” - A Comparative Approach, Sigmund A. Cohn Jun 2016

“Criminal Records” - A Comparative Approach, Sigmund A. Cohn

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.


Evading Miller, Robert S. Chang, David A. Perez, Luke M. Rona, Christopher M. Schafbuch Nov 2015

Evading Miller, Robert S. Chang, David A. Perez, Luke M. Rona, Christopher M. Schafbuch

Seattle University Law Review

Miller v. Alabama appeared to strengthen constitutional protections for juvenile sentencing that the United States Supreme Court recognized in Roper v. Simmons and Graham v. Florida. In Roper, the Court held that executing a person for a crime committed as a juvenile is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In Graham, the Court held that sentencing a person to life without parole for a nonhomicide offense committed as a juvenile is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. In Miller, the Court held that a mandatory sentence of life without parole for a homicide offense committed by a juvenile is also unconstitutional under …


Juvenile Death Sentence Lives On... Even After Roper V. Simmons, Akin Adepoju Dec 2014

Juvenile Death Sentence Lives On... Even After Roper V. Simmons, Akin Adepoju

University of Massachusetts Law Review

This article begins with a discussion of the Supreme Court’s decision to abolish the death penalty as applied to individuals convicted of crimes they committed before they turned 18 and proceeds with a detailed exposition of worldwide standards of juvenile sentencing. Part I of this note briefly discusses the history and purposes of the juvenile justice system in the United States. Further, there is a general discussion on the constitutionality of life without parole sentences, which provides an overview of the inconsistencies between Federal and State Courts’ approaches when sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Part II analyzes the international …


Transforming Juvenile Justice: Making Doctrine Out Of Dicta In Graham V. Florida, Jason Zolle Sep 2013

Transforming Juvenile Justice: Making Doctrine Out Of Dicta In Graham V. Florida, Jason Zolle

Michigan Law Review First Impressions

In the late 1980s and 1990s, many state legislatures radically altered the way that their laws treated children accused of crimes. Responding to what was perceived of as an epidemic of juvenile violence, academics and policymakers began to think of child criminals as a "new breed" of incorrigible "superpredators." States responded by making it easier for prosecutors to try and sentence juveniles as adults, even making it mandatory in some circumstances. Yet in the past decade, the Supreme Court handed down four opinions that limit the states' ability to treat children as adults in the justice system. Roper v. Simmons …


Punishment And Juvenile Justice: A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Constitutional Rights Of Youthful Offenders, Martin R. Gardner May 1982

Punishment And Juvenile Justice: A Conceptual Framework For Assessing Constitutional Rights Of Youthful Offenders, Martin R. Gardner

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article attempts to provide an analytical framework for identifying the punitive aspects of the juvenile justice system. The Article proposes a framework that is extrapolated from Supreme Court cases which define punishment in contexts outside the juvenile area. Several commentators have criticized the Court's definitional efforts, some because of perceived inadequacies in the developed definitions, others because of the belief that the very enterprise of defining constitutional rights in terms of the presence or absence of punishment is misguided . Although many of these criticisms of the Court's record are understandable, the alleged defects are less detrimental to an …