Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 7 of 7
Full-Text Articles in Law
Symposium: Bombshell Or Babystep - The Ramifications Of Miller V. Alabama For Sentencing Law And Juvenile Crime Policy: Symposium Foreword, Paul J. Litton
Symposium: Bombshell Or Babystep - The Ramifications Of Miller V. Alabama For Sentencing Law And Juvenile Crime Policy: Symposium Foreword, Paul J. Litton
Missouri Law Review
Part II of this Foreword briefly addresses one open constitutional question in the wake of Miller: in light of its rationale, is juvenile LWOP – whether mandatory or the result of an individualized sentencing process – constitutionally permissible? I argue that the Miller opinion itself is incoherent insofar as it permits juvenile LWOP as a constitutionally viable sentence. Part III provides a short synopsis of the controversy among Justices regarding the proper methodology for Eighth Amendment proportionality analyses. Then, with particular attention to the authors’ different takes on Miller’s implications for methodology, Part III provides a guide to the symposium …
Juvenile Lifers And Judicial Overrreach: A Curmedgeonly Meditation On Miller V. Alabama, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Juvenile Lifers And Judicial Overrreach: A Curmedgeonly Meditation On Miller V. Alabama, Frank O. Bowman Iii
Missouri Law Review
This Article focuses very little on the implications of Miller and Graham for the population they most directly affect – juvenile offenders previously eligible for sentences of life without parole – and more on the implications of the Court’s reasoning in Miller and Graham for sentencing generally. However gratifying the results of Miller and Graham may be as sentencing policy, they are troubling as a constitutional matter both because they are badly theorized and because they are two strands of a web of decisions in which the Court has consistently used doubtful constitutional interpretations to transfer power over criminal justice …
Precedent As A Policy Map: What Miller V. Alabama Tells Us About Emerging Adults And The Direction Of Contemporary Youth Services, Clark M. Peters
Precedent As A Policy Map: What Miller V. Alabama Tells Us About Emerging Adults And The Direction Of Contemporary Youth Services, Clark M. Peters
Missouri Law Review
To illuminate the role that Miller plays with regard to the wider realm of youth policy, I will employ the analytic approach of Professor John Kingdon, whose influential book Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Agendas) provides a framework for understanding how ideas move from mere proposals to effectuated policy. His approach emerges from the pluralist tradition, which emphasizes government processes and the role of political influence in affecting policy choices. In posing Kingdon’s central question – “How does an idea’s time come?” – to the Miller decision, this Article employs Kingdon’s theoretical framework in two ways. First, Kingdon’s framework is …
Not Just Kid Stuff - Extending Graham And Miller To Adults, Michael M. O'Hear
Not Just Kid Stuff - Extending Graham And Miller To Adults, Michael M. O'Hear
Missouri Law Review
Part II more fully unpacks the central jurisprudential values that animate Graham and Miller. By reference to these values, Part III explains how Graham and Miller may be reconciled with Harmelin and Ewing. Finally, Part IV discusses the application of Graham and Miller to one particular category of adult offenders – those sentenced under the three-strikes provision of 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(A) – and concludes that at least some of these offenders may have viable Eighth Amendment claims
Miller V. Alabama: What It Is, What It May Be, And What It Is Not, Nancy Gertner
Miller V. Alabama: What It Is, What It May Be, And What It Is Not, Nancy Gertner
Missouri Law Review
In Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a five to four opinion written by Justice Elena Kagan, held that mandatory life imprisonment without parole for defendants convicted of murder who were under age eighteen at the time of their crimes violated the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The decision raises a host of important questions that the University of Missouri School of Law’s recent symposium ably addressed. Is Miller a watershed opinion, prefiguring a new era of substantive Eighth Amendment jurisprudence that would apply to other imprisonment sentences across offender and offense categories? …
Eighth Amendment Differentness, William W. Berry Iii
Eighth Amendment Differentness, William W. Berry Iii
Missouri Law Review
Part II of the Article provides the context for the Miller case, outlining the theoretical underpinnings of the Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Part III describes the Court’s “different” jurisprudence, linking the concept of “juveniles are different” to the Court’s longstanding view that “death is different.” In Part IV, the Article demonstrates how the two possible interpretations of the Court’s statement in Miller that “juveniles are different” – as a character-based form of differentness and, in the case of juvenile LWOP, as a punishment-based form of differentness – create distinct theoretical bases for broadening the scope of the Eighth Amendment. Finally, …
Mill(Er)Ing Mandatory Minimums: What Federal Lawmakers Should Take From Miller V. Alabama, Mary Price
Mill(Er)Ing Mandatory Minimums: What Federal Lawmakers Should Take From Miller V. Alabama, Mary Price
Missouri Law Review
In this Article, I make the case that, while the robust proportionality principles informing Miller and similar cases are unlikely to translate into the end of mandatory minimum sentencing by way of the Eighth Amendment (at least anytime soon), embracing sentencing proportionality is the key for lawmakers who are – or should be – addressing the unsustainable growth in the federal prison population as a distinct threat to public safety. Politicians who support mandatory minimums have been immune over the years to the many reasoned arguments about how unjust those sentences are and what costs they pose to families and …