The Court went on (1. b) to assert that using the Eighth Amendment to apply to an issue in a public school would amount to "wrenching " it from "its historical context" -- which is actually a safeguard against criminals. The plaintiffs had also used the Fourteenth Amendment to argue that James Ingraham was not given due process, but the High Court (2.) stated that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require notice and a hearing prior to delivering blows from a wooden paddle (corporal punishment) in a public school environment since that punishment is authorized by "common law" (Cornell Law School).
The justices that ruled with the majority and refused to grant relief to the Ingraham family: Powell, Burger, Blackmun, Stewart and Rehnquist. Those justices dissenting from the majority opinion: White, Brennan, Marshall and Stevens. As to his dissenting opinion, Justice White asserted that because the "Framers" of the Constitution "did not choose to insert the word 'criminal' into the language of the Eighth Amendment," therefore the Amendment's prohibition against cruel...
2).
White's point was that when the majority of the Court concluded that the Eighth Amendment does not apply to non-criminal punishment, they were basing that opinion on "a vague and inconclusive recitation of the history of the Amendment" (Cornell Law School).
Works Cited
Cornell University Law School. (2010). Ingraham v. Wright (No. 75-6527). Syllabus, Supreme
Court of the United States / Certiorari to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth
Circuit. Retrieved March 28, 2011, from http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0430_0651_ZS.html.
Cornell University Law School. (2010). Ingraham v. Wright (No. 75-6527). White, J. Dissenting
Opinion Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved March 28, 2011, from http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0430_0651_ZD.html.
