Roper Vs Simmons Essay

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Anthony Kennedy that standards of decency have evolved so that executing minors is cruel and unusual punishment that was prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The majority decision cited a consensus against the juvenile death penalty among state legislatures, and its own determination that the death penalty is a disproportionate punishment for minors. The Supreme Court also pointed to what they considered overwhelming international opinion and statutes against the death penalty for juveniles. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Clarence Thomas all dissented. Justice Scalia delivered the dissenting opinion with Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas joining. In an effort to gain a better understanding of Dworkin’s and Scalia’s approaches to jurisprudence in regards to the majority and dissenting opinion, we must first lay out the roadmap of the opinions.

In the majority opinion, Justice Kennedy ruled that executing minors was indeed cruel and unusual punishment. He based his decision off of several factors including previous cases, evolving social standards of decency, and how other countries handled similar situations. The evolving standards of decency test,

He cited The Federalist Papers in his argument that the role of the judiciary in regards to the Constitution was to interpret the law as it was argued out in the legislature. He went on to argue that the Court existed to rule on what the law says, not what it ought to say. It was the legislature to make laws as laid out specifically in the Constitution and to amend them if public perception and opinion changed on the matter, not the Court. Justice Scalia went on to challenge the right of “unelected lawyers” to contemplate moral values and to impose them on the