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"Cruel and Unequal Punishment"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new piece on SSRN from Nita Farahany. Here is the interesting abstract: This article argues Atkins and its progeny of categorical exemptions to the death penalty create and new and as of yet undiscovered interaction between the Eighth and the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The United States Supreme Court, the legal academy and commentators have failed to consider the relationship between the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause and the Equal Protection Clause that the Court's new Eighth Amendment jurisprudence demands. This article puts forth a new synthesis of these two clauses, and demonstrates how the Court's new Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has remarkable Fourteenth Amendment implications...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 11, 2008 (boomark / email).