Gardner's Article Published in Tennessee Law Review

11 Jul 2016    

Professor Martin Gardner's article, Youthful Offenders and the Eighth Amendment Right to Rehabilitation: Limitations on the Punishment of Juveniles, was published in the Tennessee Law Review. 

In the article, Gardner argues that in light of a recent series of cases disallowing capital punishment and life sentences without parole (LWOP), as cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment when applied to juveniles, the Court has now recognized that young people, specifically adolescents, uniquely possess the constitutional right to a meaningful opportunity to be rehabilitated. This right is based on the Court's identification of adolescents as, among other things, singularly amenable to rehabilitation, thus designating them a categorically distinct class from adults. Specifically, Gardner shows, the Court's decisions logically extend beyond LWOP sentences and strongly suggest that it is now unconstitutional to punish adolescent offenders with any sentence of imprisonment without providing for their possible rehabilitation.