by Jeremy Leaming
From time to time, perhaps once a decade, syndicated columnist George Will can say or write something that does more than trumpet right-wing talking points. A recent piece on the Supreme Court’s consideration of whether sentencing juveniles to prison with no chance of parole violates the Constitution is an example.
Writing about cases involving juveniles who were sentenced to life in prison for crimes they committed when they were 14, Will says the judges involved had “no discretion to impose any other” sentences, and that such mandatory sentencing bars courts from taking into consideration our “society’s sense of cruelty.” This kind of thinking, howe
ver, as Will notes can undercut so-called originalism, a method of interpreting the Constitution favored by conservative judges. Toward the end of his column, Will writes that “even the ‘originalist’ Scalia, although disposed to construe the Constitution’s terms as they were understood when ratified, would today proscribe some late-18th-century punishments, such as public lashing and branding.”
Instead of obsessively trying to figure out what the Constitution’s framers thought when they crafted the document, competent judges today consider societal developments, which are informed by science. In fact, Will writes that the high court “has accommodated what science teaches.” He cites high court opinions from 2005 and 2010 that took into account studies on the differences between youngsters and adults in limiting the use of the death penalty in cases involving juveniles.
In 2005’s Roper v. Simmons, the justices relied in part on the differences between children and adults in concluding that the death penalty would not be imposed for crimes committed by those under 18, and later in Graham v. Florida that life sentences without parole would not be dealt to juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes.
Will argues that the social science should be relied on by the high court in finding that teenagers committed of violent crimes, including homicide, should not be imprisoned forever. “Denying juveniles even a chance for parole defeats the penal objective of rehabilitation,” Will writes.
In a March 13 guest post for ACSblog law professor Kristin Henning also notes that scientific research “on adolescent development bolsters the commonsense understanding that teenagers lack self-control, are vulnerable to environmental pressures, and have fewer life experiences on which to draw in evaluating the consequences of their actions.”
n lead to that considered reflection which is the foundation for remorse, renewal and rehabilitation." An adolescent sentenced to life in prison without any possibility of parole stands for the proposition that some children are completely finished before they are even completed.
Petitioners Joe Sullivan and Terrance Graham were both sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for offenses that did not involve homicide in Florida. Sullivan was 13 years old when he was sentenced to spend the remainder of his natural life in prison. Graham received life without parole for a parole violation at 17 years old. He was sentenced without a trial.
public international law, I always knew that these two areas of law were interrelated. But I had not anticipated that a case with facts which were purely domestic in nature-a criminal case in rural Alabama-would be directly affected by a consideration of international state practice. I felt proud of the U.S. legal system and thought back to my classmates in London, where I studied public international law, and their criticism of the theory of American exceptionalism. Surely, their criticisms had to be checked. But of course, a countervailing set of criticisms from domestic jurists immediately surfaced. These criticisms-which appeared more like xenophobia than American exceptionalism-gave me pause. How could looking outward and considering other countries' practices be considered a weakness when we pride ourselves in being a country of immigrants?