excessive fines

Our Anemic Excessive Fines Clause: Are State Courts Following The Federal Lead?

Wake Forest Law Review (2025)

In 2019, in Timbs v. Indiana, the United States Supreme Court held for the first time that the Eighth Amendment Excessive Fines Clause is incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment and thus limits the fines that can be imposed by state and local authorities. In its opinion, the Court suggested that the Clause...

(Un)Constitutional Punishments: Eighth Amendment Silos, Penological Purposes, and People’s “Ruin”

The Yale Law Journal Forum (2020)

In 2019, all Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court agreed in Timbs v. Indiana that the Constitution’s prohibition on excessive fines applied to the states. The Court’s opinion discussed the Excessive Fines Clause’s “venerable lineage” and termed its protections “fundamental.” Justice Thomas, concurring, wrote that the English prohibition against excessive fines aimed...