Excessive bail shall not be required nor excessive fines imposed, nor
cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
cruel and unusual punishment, this Article examines the differences
Among specific topics are why the Eighth Amendment bans
cruel and unusual punishment, juveniles and other crimes: whether they are a guide to future cases, gender and capital punishment, Chief Justice William H., Rehnquist (1924-2005), the Code of Hammurabi (1780 BCE), and the 2012 United Nations Resolution on the Use of the Death Penalty.
Interpreting the clause differently, justices disagree about what constitutes
cruel and unusual punishment. Proponents of the death penalty argue the Constitution permits capital punishment, and that various forms of execution are neither cruel nor unusual.
The Constitution, and this nation's founding principles of justice and fairness, require that executions be humanely administrated and not constitute
cruel and unusual punishment.
Supreme Court decision holding that it is
cruel and unusual punishment for states to require all juveniles who commit the crime of murder to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and a decision rendered last year by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that all juveniles convicted of first-degree murder under the age of 18 must be eligible for parole.
The concepts of
cruel and unusual punishment and substantive due process become so close as to merge when the substantive due process argument is stated in the following manner: because capital punishment deprives an individual of a fundamental right (i.e., the right to life), the State needs a compelling interest to justify it.
or unusual punishment instead of
cruel and unusual punishment. (19)
The court said the Louisiana law would have violated the US constitution's banon"
cruel and unusual punishment" and voted 5-4 in favour of striking down the law.
An antidiscrimination conception of "
cruel and unusual punishment" more assuredly fits both elements of the constitutional conjunction.
Part of our series on the Constitution, the article looks at recent legal challenges to capital punishment, including whether current execution methods constitute "
cruel and unusual punishment."