What is the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution?
The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees citizens the right to be free from excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment. It was ratified along with the Bill of Rights and took effect in 1791. The Eighth Amendment is supplemented by the 14th amendment and its Due Process clause, and it borrows from the English Bill of Rights of 100 years earlier. It was first ratified in the United States in 1776 in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and combines with the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Amendments to protect the rights of the accused. The cruel and unusual punishment provisions of the Eighth Amendment prohibit punishments deemed excessive or removed from the values of society, including drawing and quartering, a practice that was popular throughout Europe at the time. It further prohibits the extreme punishments of disembowelment, public dissection, burning alive, and stripping of citizenship. It did allow for the use of hanging and a firing squad, though these h
Related Questions
- How does the proposed amendment interact with the Missouri Constitutions existing Hancock Amendment, and does Hancock already provide adequate legal protection against a transfer tax?
- why political advertising is protected to the maximum by the First Amendment in the US Constitution?
- What amendment of constitution abolished slavery?
