due process

When a Prison Sentence Becomes Unconstitutional

Georgetown Law Journal (2022)

Mass incarceration has many evils. One of them is the length and apparent fixedness of many criminal sentences—a relatively new development in the history of American criminal adjudication. Sympathetic system actors, concerned about this problem, often complain that they lack the ability to revisit sentences that have outlived commonsense value. This complaint...

Strict Scrutiny Under The Eighth Amendment

Florida State University Law Review (2013)

The basic principle of the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Eighth Amendment is that the phrase “cruel and unusual” must draw its meaning from “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” To implement this principle, the Court has considered whether “objective indicia” of prevailing com-munity norms...