The Supreme Court Should Be Ashamed of Itself

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook

24 April 21

n an appalling ruling yesterday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority rolled back restrictions on sentencing juveniles to life without parole. It’s both legally and morally heinous.

Not only does this ruling upend clearly established precedent, it imposes patently cruel punishment on some of the most vulnerable members of society. As Sonia Sotomayor noted in her blistering dissent, "70 percent of all youths sentenced to life without parole are children of color,” and oftentimes their crimes are the result of severe trauma and the fact that juveniles’ brains are not fully developed.

The ruling, written by Brett Kavanaugh, shreds two precedent rulings stipulating that both mandatory sentences (sentences imposed automatically upon conviction) and discretionary sentences (sentences imposed at the discretion of a judge) of juvenile life without parole violate the 8th Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishments. The previous rulings created a requirement that a judge make a finding of “permanent incorrigibility” of the defendant in order to sentence them to life without parole, meaning the crime must be so rare and heinous that there is no possibility of rehabilitation.

The conservative majority’s ruling essentially lifted this requirement for finding “permanent incorrigibility,” giving judges much broader discretion in sentencing juveniles to life without parole. It’s the first time in almost two decades that the court has imposed harsher rules for juvenile offenders rather than enacting more leniency. It’s unimaginably cruel, and the Court should be ashamed of itself.