Supreme Court Established in Analyzing the Constitutionality

¶ … Supreme Court established in analyzing the constitutionality of punishment? List and discuss at least three of them.

The only specific mention of definition of legally administrable punishment in the U.S. Constitution is that the punishment not be cruel and unusual, a vague semantic term that has proved fertile ground for both opponents and proponents of the death penalty. Capital punishment, however, was declared unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia (1972). This was not because it meted out death to a defendant. Rather, it was the grounds that it was administered in a cruel and unusual fashion. Thus it was in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Also, Georgia's capital punishment laws were meted out in an unclearly defined fashion that was overly subjective, and according to sociological data submitted to the court, seemed to unfairly penalize African-Americans. It was also thus in violation of the equal protection clause and violated defendant's civil rights. This decision, after Georgia further clarified its statutes and after the court changed in its ideological composition, was later overturned in Gregg v. Georgia (1976). Still, even today the court requires that a punishment not be cruel, unusual, and that according to the equal protection clause, must be equitably enforced.

Source

Supreme Court, United States: History." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia. © 1994, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 on Infoplease.

© 2000 -- 2004 Pearson Education, publishing as Infoplease.

25 Jan. 2005 .

Discuss the impact of the Thirteenth Amendment via the overturning of the Dred Scott decision and it effects on slavery

Abraham Lincoln once said no nation could survive half enslaved and half free, and no case illustrated this better than the Dred Scott decision. The case involved the bitterly contested issue of the status of slavery in the federal territories. In 1834 a 'master' took the slave named Dred Scott from Missouri, a slave state, to a free state, and then into the Wisconsin Territory, where slavery was prohibited. Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that residence in a free state (Illinois) and subsequently in a free territory had ended his bondage. When the case went before the Supreme Court, the court held that the family of Scott's 'master' could not be deprived of its property in the form of Scott. The justices also held that a black "whose ancestors were ... sold as slaves" was not entitled to the rights of a federal citizen and therefore had no standing in court and that that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the territories. However, the thirteenth amendment prohibited slavery in all American land, nullifying the decision.