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The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S

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The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S University of Baltimore Law ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law All Faculty Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 2019 A Century in the Making: The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment John Bessler University of Baltimore School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation John Bessler, A Century in the Making: The Glorious Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, 27 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 989 (2019). Available at: https://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac/1084 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A CENTURY IN THE MAKING: THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION, THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE U.S. CONSTITUTION’S EIGHTH AMENDMENT John D. Bessler* ABSTRACT The sixteen words in the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment have their roots in England’s Glorious Revolution of 1688–89. This Article traces the historical events that initially gave rise to the prohibitions against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments. Those three proscriptions can be found in the English Declaration of Rights and in its statutory counterpart, the English Bill of Rights. In particular, the Article describes the legal cases and draconian punish- ments during the Stuart dynasty that led English and Scottish parliamentarians to insist on protections against cruelty and excessive governmental actions. In describ- ing the grotesque punishments of Titus Oates and others during the reign of King James II, the Article sheds light on the origins of the language of Section 10 of the English Bill of Rights. That language became a model for similarly worded provi- sions in early American constitutions and declarations of rights, including the Virginia Declaration of Rights, that were linguistic forerunners of the Eighth Amendment. The U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment, ratified in 1791, became the law of the land more than 100 years after the Glorious Revolution, though that provision of the U.S. Bill of Rights was shaped by the Enlightenment as well as by early American understandings of English law and custom. The Article describes the seventeenth- century origins of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions and the Enlightenment’s impact on eighteenth-century thinkers, while highlighting how existing American prohibitions against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punish- ments are now understood to bar acts inconsistent with “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The Article concludes by outlining the implications of the Eighth Amendment’s history for modern American jurisprudence. In doing so, it provides a critique of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent Eighth Amendment decision in Bucklew v. Precythe. * Associate Professor, University of Baltimore School of Law; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center; Of Counsel, Berens & Miller, P.A., Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author extends his appreciation and thanks to Raquel Flynn and Shannon Hayden, two University of Baltimore law students who provided outstanding research as- sistance during this Article’s preparation. 989 990 WILLIAM & MARY BILL OF RIGHTS JOURNAL [Vol. 27:989 INTRODUCTION The meaning of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment has long been treated as an enigma.1 Since its ratification in 1791, the significance of the Eighth Amend- ment’s sixteen words2 has been fiercely debated—and hotly contested—by innumer- able scholars and law professors,3 countless judges,4 practicing lawyers,5 and members of the American public more broadly.6 It is a debate with important, sometimes life- or-death, consequences,7 and it is one that has played out in countless law review 1 See Joseph L. Hoffmann, “The ‘Cruel and Unusual Punishment’ Clause,” in THE BILL OF RIGHTS IN MODERN AMERICA 173 (David J. Bodenhamer & James W. Ely, Jr. eds., rev. & expanded ed. 2000) (“The cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment today remains a constitutional enigma.”). 2 U.S. CONST. amend. VIII (“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”). 3 Compare RAOUL BERGER, DEATH PENALTIES: THE SUPREME COURT’S OBSTACLE COURSE 1–6 (1982) (arguing that the Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), which declared the death penalty to be a “cruel and unusual” punish- ment, was wrongly decided), with HUGO ADAM BEDAU, KILLING AS PUNISHMENT: REFLECTIONS ON THE DEATH PENALTY IN AMERICA 91 (2004) (arguing that “an appropriate moral reading of the Eighth Amendment yields the conclusion that the death penalty is, indeed, unconstitu- tional”). A number of prominent scholars have written about the Eighth Amendment. See, e.g., Deborah W. Denno, Execution and the Forgotten Eighth Amendment, in AMERICA’S EXPERIMENT WITH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: REFLECTIONS ON THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FU- TURE OF THE ULTIMATE PENAL SANCTION 547–77 (James Acker, Robert Bohm & Charles Lanier eds., 1998); Sharon Dolovich, Cruelty, Prison Conditions, and the Eighth Amendment, 84 N.Y.U. L. REV. 881 (2009); Alexander A. Reinert, Reconceptualizing the Eighth Amendment: Slaves, Prisoners, and “Cruel and Unusual” Punishment, 94 N.C. L. REV. 817 (2016); Meghan J. Ryan, Does the Eighth Amendment Punishments Clause Prohibit Only Punishments That Are Both Cruel and Unusual?, 87 WASH. U. L. REV. 567 (2010). 4 Compare Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 177 (1976) (“It is apparent from the text of the Constitution itself that the existence of capital punishment was accepted by the Framers. At the time the Eighth Amendment was ratified, capital punishment was a common sanction in every State. Indeed, the First Congress of the United States enacted legislation providing death as the penalty for specified crimes.”), with Kevin M. Barry, The Law of Abolition, 107 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 521, 523 (2017) (“[F]or over a half-century, at least thirty-five federal and state judges have concluded that the death penalty is unconstitutional per se.”). 5 See, e.g., COLIN DAYAN, THE STORY OF CRUEL AND UNUSUAL (2007). 6 See, e.g., Bob Herbert, In America; Cruel and Unusual, N.Y. TIMES (Mar. 8, 2001), https:// nyti.ms/2IByrwG; Carl Hiaasen, Cruel and Unusual Ways of Execution, MIAMI HERALD (May 3, 2014), https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/carl-hiaasen/arti cle1963811.html [http://perma.cc/9H2L-UGT3]. 7 See generally JOHN D. BESSLER, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: THE AMERICAN DEATH PENALTY AND THE FOUNDERS’ EIGHTH AMENDMENT (2012) [hereinafter BESSLER, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL]; MICHAEL MELTSNER, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: THE SUPREME COURT AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (2011) (discussing the history and development of the Eighth Amendment). 2019] A CENTURY IN THE MAKING 991 articles,8 in state and federal courts,9 and before the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States.10 Although the Eighth Amendment’s prohibitions originally applied only against the federal government,11 the U.S. Supreme Court—using its selective incorporation doctrine12—made the ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” applicable against the 8 See, e.g., William W. Berry III, Evolved Standards, Evolving Justices? The Case for a Broader Application of the Eighth Amendment, 96 WASH. U. L. REV. 105 (2018); Laurence Claus, The Antidiscrimination Eighth Amendment, 28 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL’Y 119 (2004); Aliza Plener Cover, The Eighth Amendment’s Lost Jurors: Death Qualification and Evolving Standards of Decency, 92 IND. L.J. 113 (2016); Phyllis Goldfarb, Arriving Where We’ve Been: Death’s Indignity and the Eighth Amendment, 102 IOWA L. REV. BULL. 386 (2018); Scott W. Howe, The Implications of Incorporating the Eighth Amendment Prohibition on Excessive Bail, 43 HOFSTRA L. REV. 1039 (2015); Robert Johnson, Solitary Confinement Until Death by State-Sponsored Homicide: An Eighth Amendment Assessment of the Modern Execution Process, 73 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1213 (2016); Meghan J. Ryan, Taking Dignity Seriously: Excavating the Backdrop of the Eighth Amendment, 2016 U. ILL. L. REV. 2129. 9 See, e.g., Larry C. Berkson, The Eighth Amendment: A New Frontier of Creative Con- stitutional Law, in CIVIL LIBERTIES: POLICY AND POLICY MAKING 107 (Stephen L. Wasby ed., 1976): [T]he concept of cruel and unusual punishment has, until very recently, remained an obscure, if important, part of the Bill of Rights. For example, after an exhaustive search of opinions reported prior to 1870, only 20 cases were found that dealt with the prohibition. Beginning with that date, however, larger number of cases raising the issue did begin appear- ing before state and federal courts. The total by 1916 was slightly over 200 cases. The number of cases reported during each subsequent ten- year period rose in rather even increments until the 1955–66 era. At that time, litigation of the inhibition nearly doubled (253 cases). 10 See generally CAROL S. STEIKER & JORDAN M. STEIKER, COURTING DEATH: THE SU- PREME COURT AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (2016) (focusing on the Eighth Amendment as interpreted historically by the Supreme Court). 11 See Pervear v. Massachusetts, 72 U.S. (5 Wall.) 475 (1866); Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833); see also GEORGE F. COLE, CHRISTOPHER E. SMITH & CHRISTINA DEJONG, THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE 169 (15th ed. 2017) (“For most of U.S. history, the Bill of Rights did not apply to most criminal cases, because it was designed to protect people from abusive actions by the federal government.”).
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