Trop v. Dulles

We're talking about torture here.

Okay? That would've been totally antithetical to the Founding Fathers' understanding, 'cause they, of course they had capital punishment back then.

Now, in 1958, the, uh, Tropp versus Dulles, you actually see a, uh, uh, the court striking down, uh, stripping citizens' citizenship as a punishment, and they read it this way.

They said, "The Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Eh, eh.

Wrong.

As Wilkerson v. Utah suggests, when a severe punishment is inflicted in the great majority of cases in which it is legally available, there is little likelihood that the state is inflicting it arbitrarily.

If, however, the infliction of a severe punishment is something different from that which is generally done in such cases, Trop v. Dulles 356 U.S. 86, there is a substantial likelihood that the state, contrary to the requirements of regularity and fairness embodied in the clause, is inflicting the punishment arbitrarily.

This principle is especially important today.

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