How Supreme Court rulings can be ignored to avoid 'cruel' punishment: analysts
Recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings can be beaten at a state level, an expert told Slate Tuesday — but it will take a lot of work.
Slate's report outlined how states can put in place their own laws to effectively bypass rulings put in place by the U.S. Supreme Court.
One ruling cited effectively made homeless encampments illegal. There are also laws the court left in place that allow "life without parole" for youth in Arizona.
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Slate quoted law professor Rachel Barkow, who call the Supreme Court “the court of mass incarceration.”
The report stated that the problem is that the rulings sidestep the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which deal with cruel and unusual punishment, and a clear constitutional ban on extreme punishments for children.
Fifty-five years ago, Illinois held a Constitutional Convention to write the strongest law protecting people from "extreme and vengeful punishments," rather than the "cruel and unusual" punishments cited in the U.S. Constitution. It became known as the "proportionate penalties clause."
It was a response to the Civil Rights Movement opposing violence by police and unjust incarceration.
During the convention, civil rights activist Leonard Foster suggested, “In addition to looking to the act that the person committed, we also should look at the person who committed the act and determine to what extent he can be restored to useful citizenship.”
His suggestion would apply to both the courts and the legislature.
In Arizona, the state Constitution “insisted that punishment must serve the goals of reform and rehabilitation, believing that public safety was better served by helping people return to society. Any punishment that forgoes these ideals — including death, needlessly long prison sentences, and brutal conditions of confinement — is unconstitutional.”
Pennsylvania banned “cruel” punishments in 1790, two years after the U.S. Constitution was ratified.
It means state courts can follow their own constitutional language for state crimes and sentences. Slate explained that hasn't been the practice in the past, however, as state courts "unquestioningly abdicated their power as the final arbiters of state constitutions and instead applied federal precedent as their own — an approach that has been largely true even in Arizona, Illinois, and Pennsylvania."
The authors concluded that, if the U.S. Supreme Court intends to ignore the Eighth Amendment, state courts should follow their own laws.