Supreme Court Year in Review

I see this as a fairly small but still significant step in expanding the definition of cruel and unusual punishment?the Eighth Amendment standard for declaring a sentence off limits. It?s incremental because two years ago, the court ruled unconstitutional mandatory LWOP for teenagers who commit crimes other than murder. Today, the court simply extended the reasoning of that ruling, Graham v. Florida, to teenage killers. Not surprising, right? Especially since the whole idea behind Graham was that minors are less culpable than adults in part because their brains aren?t fully developed. Once again today, the court relied on the research of Laurence Steinberg at Temple University, whose studies of the adolescent brain have been crucial to this line of cases. Steinberg has found that teenagers tend to have less impulse control and more proclivity for risk, and as Kagan says, these findings mean the court?s decisions rest ?not only on common sense?on ?what any parent knows??but on science and social science as well.?

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