The Question of Evolving Standards of Decency and the Modern Concept of American Childhood in the Supreme Court

Book excerpt: Modern Americans increasingly perceive childhood as a distinct stage of life. As a result, the legal recognition of psychological differences between juveniles and adults in a series of Supreme Court cases has rendered juveniles under the age of eighteen as less culpable during criminal sentencing. This increasingly liberal attitude in the courts towards juvenile punishment has been officially established through Eighth Amendment jurisprudence in three major Supreme Court cases: Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010), and Miller v. Alabama (2012). Roper v. Simmons established the precedent of leniency towards juveniles by abolishing the death penalty for minors under eighteen years of age. Graham v. Florida and Miller v. Alabama followed, establishing that life imprisonment for juveniles for a homicidal crime and for a non-homicidal crime respectively are unconstitutional. After close analysis of these landmark cases in juvenile sentencing, there is substantial evidence that the Supreme Court did not simply rely on an interpretation of the text of the Eighth Amendments cruel and unusual punishment clause, as elaborated in earlier jurisprudence, but instead looked towards current societys moral opinion as a determining factor in the rulings. The Courts majority relied on the concept of evolving standards of decency in society, ruling that societys current ideas about juveniles place within both the nation and the world render harsh punishments typically applied to adults to be cruel and unusual for juveniles, in this sense counter to the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. To pinpoint societys current attitude toward juveniles, this thesis entails a close evaluation of the amicus briefs used by the Court. The examination of amicus briefs is the central contribution of this thesis. My comparison of texts of the briefs and the majority rulings indicates that the Courts majorities were influenced by the briefs. Sixteen out of the eighteen briefs submitted supported the evolving standards of decency view and incorporated social science evidence. Using Roper v. Simmons as an example, the majority opinion echoed sources that claimed to represent societys prevailing attitudes about juveniles, most significantly, submitted by advocacy groups, legal and medical professionals, and international human rights organizations. This thesis evaluates how these amicus briefs articulated the opinions of a number of groups within American society to place juveniles in a separate and protected class of citizens. Judging by textual comparisons, the majority on the Court responded to this action by paying greater attention to the shifting opinions of morality within society than the words of the Constitution. In doing so, the majority accepted social science evidence as a legitimate indicator of evolving standards of decency and affirmed that public opinion should be relevant in judicial rulings. The dissents in Roper took issue with the relevance of changing values as indicated by social scientific evidence. Briefs submitted by groups favorable to a strict constitutional basis of judgement challenged the majoritys opinion, displaying many connections to the dissents.