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"Graham v. Florida: Justice Kennedy?s Vision of Childhood and the Role of Judges"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new piece authored by Professor Tamar Birckhead and available via SSRN. Here is the abstract: This short article examines Graham v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court decision holding that the Eighth Amendment?s Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause does not permit a juvenile offender to be sentenced to life in prison without parole for a nonhomicide crime.  This article argues that Justice Anthony Kennedy?s majority opinion is grounded not only in Roper v. Simmons, which invalidated the death penalty for juvenile offenders on Eighth Amendment grounds, and Kennedy v. Louisiana, which held that the Eighth Amendment prohibited the death penalty for the offense of rape of a child, but in Establishment Clause cases set in the context of public schools and Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause cases upholding parental notification requirements for teenagers seeking abortions...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on October 24, 2010 (boomark / email).