Sentencing Law and Policy

The Modern Eighth Amendment

The title of this post was the name for one of yesterday's panels at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools ("SEALS") Conference. Organized by Will Berry (Ole Miss) and Meghan Ryan (SMU), the panel addressed the history of the Eighth Amendment, Eighth Amendment doctrine and its future. Panelists (myself included) covered everything from the original meaning of "cruel and unusual" to the Court's problematic use of the "evolving standards of decency" doctrine and the future of the death penalty and JLWOP.

There really was something for everyone (well, everyone interested in Eighth Amendment issues)!

Corinna Lain (Richmond) provides a full summary here.

"Briefing the Supreme Court: Promoting Science or Myth?"

The title of this post is the title of this new timely essay authored by Melissa Hamilton now available via SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The United States Supreme Court is considering Packingham v. North Carolina, a case testing the constitutionality of a ban on the use of social networking sites by registered sex offenders.  An issue that has arisen in the case is the state’s justification for the ban.  North Carolina and thirteen other states represented in a friend of the court brief make three claims concerning the risk of registered sex offenders: (1) sex offenders have a notoriously high rate of sexual recidivism; (2) sex offenders are typically crossover offenders in having both adult and child victims; and (3) sexual predators commonly use social networking sites to lure children for sexual exploitation purposes.  The collective states contend that these three claims are supported by scientific evidence and common sense.  This Essay explores the reliability of the scientific studies cited in the briefings considering the heteregenous group of registered sex offenders to whom the social networking ban is targeted.