No Cruel or Unusual Punishment

No Cruel or Unusual Punishment PDF Author: David Machajewski
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1538343118
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
When the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, it had a major flaw: it failed to acknowledge individual rights. Early Americans were not pleased. They didn't believe their new government was respecting their freedoms. Thus, the Bill of Rights was created. Readers will explore the history, significance, and controversy surrounding the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel or unusual punishment. Primary sources, sidebars, and compelling stories, demonstrate how the amendment protects, and potentially harms, criminals. Historic and present-day examples of long-standing debates about the amendment's controversial "cruel and unusual" clause further illustrate the amendment's importance.

No Cruel or Unusual Punishment

No Cruel or Unusual Punishment PDF Author: David Machajewski
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1538343118
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
When the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1788, it had a major flaw: it failed to acknowledge individual rights. Early Americans were not pleased. They didn't believe their new government was respecting their freedoms. Thus, the Bill of Rights was created. Readers will explore the history, significance, and controversy surrounding the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel or unusual punishment. Primary sources, sidebars, and compelling stories, demonstrate how the amendment protects, and potentially harms, criminals. Historic and present-day examples of long-standing debates about the amendment's controversial "cruel and unusual" clause further illustrate the amendment's importance.

The Eighth Amendment and Its Future in a New Age of Punishment

The Eighth Amendment and Its Future in a New Age of Punishment PDF Author: Meghan J. Ryan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108580289
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
This book provides a theoretical and practical exploration of the constitutional bar against cruel and unusual punishments, excessive bail, and excessive fines. It explores the history of this prohibition, the current legal doctrine, and future applications of the Eighth Amendment. With contributions from the leading academics and experts on the Eighth Amendment and the wide range of punishments and criminal justice actors it touches, this volume addresses constitutional theory, legal history, federalism, constitutional values, the applicable legal doctrine, punishment theory, prison conditions, bail, fines, the death penalty, juvenile life without parole, execution methods, prosecutorial misconduct, race discrimination, and law & science.

The Story of Cruel and Unusual

The Story of Cruel and Unusual PDF Author: Colin Dayan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262260581
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 122

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Book Description
A searing indictment of the American penal system that finds the roots of the recent prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo in the steady dismantling of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment. The revelations of prisoner abuse and torture at Abu Ghraib and more recently at Guantánamo were shocking to most Americans. And those who condemned the treatment of prisoners abroad have focused on U.S. military procedures and abuses of executive powers in the war on terror, or, more specifically, on the now-famous White House legal counsel memos on the acceptable limits of torture. But in The Story of Cruel and Unusual, Colin Dayan argues that anyone who has followed U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment would recognize the prisoners' treatment at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as a natural extension of the language of our courts and practices in U.S. prisons. In fact, it was no coincidence that White House legal counsel referred to a series of Supreme Court decisions in the 1980s and 1990s in making its case for torture.Dayan traces the roots of "acceptable" torture to slave codes of the nineteenth century that deeply embedded the dehumanization of the incarcerated in our legal system. Although the Eighth Amendment was interpreted generously during the prisoners' rights movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, this period of judicial concern was an anomaly. Over the last thirty years, Supreme Court decisions have once again dismantled Eighth Amendment protections and rendered such words as "cruel" and "inhuman" meaningless when applied to conditions of confinement and treatment during detention. Prisoners' actual pain and suffering have been explained away in a rhetorical haze—with rationalizations, for example, that measure cruelty not by the pain or suffering inflicted, but by the intent of the person who inflicted it. The Story of Cruel and Unusual is a stunningly original work of legal scholarship, and a searing indictment of the U.S. penal system.

Cruel and Unusual

Cruel and Unusual PDF Author: Anne-Marie Cusac
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300155492
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
The statistics are startling. Since 1973, America’s imprisonment rate has multiplied over five times to become the highest in the world. More than two million inmates reside in state and federal prisons. What does this say about our attitudes toward criminals and punishment? What does it say about us? This book explores the cultural evolution of punishment practices in the United States. Anne-Marie Cusac first looks at punishment in the nation’s early days, when Americans repudiated Old World cruelty toward criminals and emphasized rehabilitation over retribution. This attitude persisted for some 200 years, but in recent decades we have abandoned it, Cusac shows. She discusses the dramatic rise in the use of torture and restraint, corporal and capital punishment, and punitive physical pain. And she links this new climate of punishment to shifts in other aspects of American culture, including changes in dominant religious beliefs, child-rearing practices, politics, television shows, movies, and more. America now punishes harder and longer and with methods we would have rejected as cruel and unusual not long ago. These changes are profound, their impact affects all our lives, and we have yet to understand the full consequences.

Our Rights

Our Rights PDF Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195325672
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
"This boxed set contains classroom resources to help America's educators teach about the most important documents in U.S. history"--Box

Cruel & Unusual

Cruel & Unusual PDF Author: John D. Bessler
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1555537170
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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Book Description
This indispensable history of the Eighth Amendment and the founders' views of capital punishment is also a passionate call for the abolition of the death penalty based on the notion of cruel and unusual punishment

Cruel and Unusual

Cruel and Unusual PDF Author: Michael Meltsner
Publisher: Quid Pro Books
ISBN: 1610270975
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
The true and gripping account of the nine-year struggle by a small band of lawyers to abolish the death penalty in the United States. Its new edition features a 2011 Foreword by death-penalty author Evan Mandery of CUNY's John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as well as a new Preface by the author.The mission, plotted out over lunch in New York's Central Park in the early 1960s, seemed as impossible as going to the moon: abolish capital punishment in every state. The approach would fight on multiple fronts, with multiple strategies. The people would be dedicated, bright, unsure, unpopular, and fascinating. This is their story: not only the cases and the arguments before courts, the death row inmates and their victims, the judges and politicians urging law and order, this is the true account of the real-life lawyers from the inside. The United States indeed went to the moon, and a few years later the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. The victory was long-sought and sweet, and the pages of this book vividly let the reader live the struggle and the victory. And while the abolition eventually became as impermanent as the nation's presence on the moon, these dedicated attorneys certainly made a difference. This is their tale.As Evan Mandery writes in his new Foreword, "In these pages, Meltsner lays bare every aspect of his and his colleaguesi thinking. You will read how they handicapped their chances, which arguments they thought would work (you may be surprised), and what they thought of the Supreme Court justices who would decide the crucial cases. You will come to understand what they perceived to be the basis for support for the death penalty, and, with Meltsner's unflinching honesty, what they perceived to be the inconsistencies in their position."Mandery concludes: "It is my odd lot in life to have read almost every major book ever written about the death penalty in America. This is the best and the most important. Every serious scholar who wants to advance an argument about capital punishment in the United States--whether it is abolitionist or in favor of the death penalty, or merely a tactical assessment--cites this book. It is open and supremely accessible." And the author's "constitutional vision was years ahead of its time. His book is timeless." Part of the Legal History and Biography Series from Quid Pro Books, the new ebook editions feature embedded pagination from previous editions (consistent with the new paperback edition as well, allowing continuity in all formats), active TOC and endnotes, and quality digital formatting.

Scalia Dissents

Scalia Dissents PDF Author: Antonin Scalia
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596987006
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Brilliant. Colorful. Visionary. Tenacious. Witty. Since his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1986, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has been described as all of these things and for good reason. He is perhaps the best-known justice on the Supreme Court today and certainly the most controversial. Yet most Americans have probably not read even one of his several hundred Supreme Court opinions. In Scalia Dissents, Kevin Ring, former counsel to the U.S. Senate's Constitution Subcommittee, lets Justice Scalia speak for himself. This volume—the first of its kind— showcases the quotable justice's take on many of today's most contentious constitutional debates. Scalia Dissentscontains over a dozen of the justice's most compelling and controversial opinions. Ring also provides helpful background on the opinions and a primer on Justice Scalia's judicial philosophy. Scalia Dissents is the perfect book for readers who love scintillating prose and penetrating insight on the most important constitutional issues of our time.

Fear of Judging

Fear of Judging PDF Author: Kate Stith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226774862
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
For two centuries, federal judges exercised wide discretion in criminal sentencing. In 1987 a complex bureaucratic apparatus termed Sentencing "Guidelines" was imposed on federal courts. FEAR OF JUDGING is the first full-scale history, analysis, and critique of the new sentencing regime, arguing that it sacrifices comprehensibility and common sense.

A Wild Justice

A Wild Justice PDF Author: Evan J Mandery
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0393348962
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Drawing on never-before-published original source detail, the epic story of two of the most consequential, and largely forgotten, moments in Supreme Court history. For two hundred years, the constitutionality of capital punishment had been axiomatic. But in 1962, Justice Arthur Goldberg and his clerk Alan Dershowitz dared to suggest otherwise, launching an underfunded band of civil rights attorneys on a quixotic crusade. In 1972, in a most unlikely victory, the Supreme Court struck down Georgia’s death penalty law in Furman v. Georgia. Though the decision had sharply divided the justices, nearly everyone, including the justices themselves, believed Furman would mean the end of executions in America. Instead, states responded with a swift and decisive showing of support for capital punishment. As anxiety about crime rose and public approval of the Supreme Court declined, the stage was set in 1976 for Gregg v. Georgia, in which the Court dramatically reversed direction. A Wild Justice is an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the Court, the justices, and the political complexities of one of the most racially charged and morally vexing issues of our time.