Law Commons^™

Children Are Different: Jones V. Mississippi, Juvenile Life Without Parole, And Why Youthfulness Matters In Sentencing, Giulia Hintz Mcquirter

Mississippi College Law Review

“We are a country of mercy, and we are a country of vengeance, and we live with both at the same time.” This is how Robert Dunham, death penalty expert and Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, describes the United States sentencing system. Battling inside each of us is the desire for people to pay for their wrongdoings, warring against the empathy of our human nature that wants to see the good in people, even criminals.

This internal conflict is rarely on better display than in cases involving child criminals. It is impossible to forget that these children …

Protecting America’S Children: Why An Executive Order Banning Juvenile Solitary Confinement Is Not Enough, Carina Muir

Pepperdine Law Review

Despite its devastating psychological, physical, and developmental effects on juveniles, solitary confinement is used in juvenile correctional facilities across the United States. This Comment posits that such treatment violates the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause, the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. It likewise argues that that President Obama’s recent Executive Order banning juvenile solitary confinement is simply not a powerful enough remedy and discusses why it must be paired with Congressional legislation or Supreme Court jurisprudence if it is to …

Comments: When Psychology Answers Constitutional Questions: The Eighth Amendment And Juvenile Sentencing, Emily M. Steiner

University of Baltimore Law Review

While weighing whether or not to turn himself in for murder and surrender to prison, a 23-year-old law student questions the high premium placed on imprisonment as a rehabilitative measure. After finally submitting to imprisonment, however, Rodion Raskolnikov comes to understand the value of atoning for his crimes and how his punishment correlates with societal justice. The balance struck between an appropriate amount of suffering and society’s need for justice is at the heart of Raskolnikov’s character development.

Despite Raskolnikov’s imprisonment and accompanying character transformation, one important question remains unanswered by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel: at what point does a punishment …

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 …

Death By Incarceration As A Cruel And Unusual Punishment When Applied To Juveniles: Extending Roper To Life Without Parole, Our Other Death Penalty, Robert Johnson, Sonia Tabriz

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Extending Roper's Reasoning To Minnesota's Juvenile Justice System, Lisa Mcnaughton

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.