
Available in Russian
Author: Maxim Arzamastsev
DOI: 10.21128/1812-7126-2024-2-45-72
Keywords: constitutional interpretation; proportionality of punishments; cruel and unusual punishment; constitutional justice
Constitutional law establishes special requirements for criminal punishment as it is the most severe type of state coercion. In the United States, the right of the state to apply criminal punishment is limited by a prohibition formulated in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This paper analyses the main trends of application of this provision in cases related to the constitutionality of different criminal measures, the methodological features related to interpretation of the prohibition, and the impact of textual, historical, penological, and moral arguments on doctrine and judicial practice. While the issues related to determining fair punishment for a crime are mainly considered political and falling within legislative bodies’ competence, the necessity to protect the constitutional rights of citizens brought to criminal liability calls for judicial supervision over these bodies’ enactments. The author examines the meanings of the criteria of “excessive”, “cruel”, and “unusual” punishment that are used in assessing whether a punishment is permissible, as well as the ways to prove these criteria. The article shows that a presumption of constitutionality applies to most types of punishment. Rebuttal of the presumption requires either proving a punishment to be exceptionally disproportionate or both intentionally cruel and unusual. As a result the constitutional prohibition creates a wide margin of permissible coercion, one seldom found by the U.S. Supreme Court to have been overstepped. One of the reasons for this is the abstract formulation of the constitutional requirement, its broad nature, and its subjective interpretation. The author shows the influence of lawyers’ ideological views on their understanding of the Eighth Amendment and links doctrinal criticism of judicial decisions with a domination by liberal-minded scholars. Despite dramatically different approaches to theories of constitutional interpretation, a compromise has been possible: a first stage of textual interpretation of the constitutional provision and a second stage of moral evaluation of the permissibility of the punishment. The application in practice of the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment not only predetermines the main features of the national criminal coercion system and ensures its progressive development, but also increases the importance of “dignity” in American constitutionalism.
About the author: Maxim Arzamastsev – Candidate of Sciences (Ph.D.) in Law, Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Law, Saint Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Citation: Arzamastsev M. (2024) Zapret zhestokikh i neobychnykh nakazaniy: opyt amerikanskogo konstitutsionalizma [Prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment: the American constitutional experience]. Sravnitel'noe konstitutsionnoe obozrenie, vol.33, no.2, pp.45–72. (In Russian).
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