Evolving Standards of Decency
In Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958), Chief Justice Earl Warren said: "The Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Subsequently, the Court has looked to societal developments, as well as looking to its own independent judgment, in determining what are those "evolving standards of decency". The Court has then applied those standards not only to say what punishments are inherently cruel, but also to say what punishments that are not inherently cruel are nevertheless cruelly disproportionate to the offense in question.
An example of the "evolving standards" idea can be seen in Jackson v. Bishop (8th Cir., 1968), an Eighth Circuit decision outlawing corporal punishment in the Arkansas prison system.
The "evolving standards" test is not without its scholarly critics. For example, Professor John Stinneford asserts that the "evolving standards" test misinterprets the Eighth Amendment:
The Framers of the Bill of Rights understood the word “unusual” to mean “contrary to long usage.” Recognition of the word’s original meaning will precisely invert the “evolving standards of decency” test, and ask the Court to compare challenged punishments with the longstanding principles and precedents of the common law, rather than shifting and nebulous notions of “societal consensus” and contemporary “standards of decency.”On the other hand, Dennis Baker has asserted that the evolving standards of decency test accords with the moral purpose of the Eighth Amendment and the Framer’s intent that the right be used to prevent citizens being subjected to all forms of unjust and disproportionate punishments. As Professor John Bessler points out, "An Essay on Crimes and Punishments," written by Cesare Beccaria in the 1760s, advocated proportionate punishments. Many of the Founding Fathers, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, read Beccaria's treatise and were influenced by it.
Read more about this topic: Eighth Amendment To The United States Constitution
Famous quotes containing the words evolving, standards and/or decency:
“There is no evolving, only unfolding. The lily is in the bit of dust which is its beginning, lily and nothing but lily: and the lily in blossom is a ne plus ultra: there is no evolving beyond.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Today so much rebellion is aimless and demoralizing precisely because children have no values to challenge. Teenage rebellion is a testing process in which young people try out various values in order to make them their own. But during those years of trial, error, embarrassment, a child needs family standards to fall back on, reliable habits of thought and feeling that provide security and protection.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)
“If you don’t believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency.... Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don’t think it’s enough.”
—Harold MacMillan (1894–1986)