Argumentative Essay On The 8th Amendment

In the discussion of the 8th amendment, this paper will examine: the history of the 8th amendment, the interpretations made by courts regarding 8th, and how the 8th affects us today. The Amendment first was ratified in 1791 along with the nine other amendments to form the bill of rights. The bill of rights is used to “lists specific prohibitions on governmental power.” (“Bill of Rights”). By doing this, the government has less power to not make the citizens feel like that even the government has to follow some sort of procedure and would stabilize the power the government has from having either too much or too little.
(Hurst v. Florida)
(Furman v. Georgia (intro)) From this case, it showed how “it has been assumed in our decisions that punishment by death is not cruel, unless the manner of execution can be said to be inhuman and barbarous” (“FindLaw's United States Supreme Court Case

One example being if modern punishments used today, like extended use of solitary confinement and use of lethal injections to kill them violate the amendment (Stevenson et al). Some believe that because both of these methods might cause both physical and mental health issues, it should violate because of the belief that if the punishments “are deliberately designed to inflict pain for pain’s sake, and are objectively harsher than punishments permissible in 1791” (Stinneford), then they must go under the cruel and unusual category. There are some flaws that could be considered for this belief, though, like for cruel punishments that were still allowed in the 1800s can be easily compared to some used today. Also, the pain that some of the ones executed went through could unexpected and wasn’t meant to happen in their punishment, causing a lot of lawsuits and suing to happen from the