Is national consensus a court’s consensus?: an empirical analysis of the proportionality review in the eighth amendment jurisprudence of the supreme court of the United States

Agenjo Aguado, Adrián

Is national consensus a court’s consensus?: an empirical analysis of the proportionality review in the eighth amendment jurisprudence of the supreme court of the United States

Citation

Agenjo Aguado, A. Is national consensus a court’s consensus?: an empirical analysis of the proportionality review in the eighth amendment jurisprudence of the supreme court of the United States. 2021. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/52955

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Abstract

The proportionality review, a doctrine developed under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, has been one of the main grounds used by the Supreme Court of the United States to limit the infliction of the death penalty and life imprisonment without parole. The proportionality analysis is based in an independent judgement and objective test, also known as national consensus review, by which the Court observes whether there is a societal consensus against one punishment in order to invalidate it. The goal of this research is to analyze, through a systematized and empirical study of the proportionality cases of the Supreme Court of the United States, the main components of the national consensus test, the frequency of its application, its alleged objective nature, and its methodological accuracy, from a social science and criminological point of view.