Roper v. Simmons: An Examination of the Supreme Courts Role

Roper v. Simmons is a perfect example of the evolving role of the Supreme Court, the sources the Supreme Court used to reach the ruling in this case is quite questionable. While I agree with the Supreme Court about protecting the younger citizens of America the Supreme Court must have the law to back up their ruling. Though in this case they do not the Supreme Court used a combination of foreign policy, moral decency, and state laws as the legal foundation for this decision. None of these things are appropriate sources for deciding what is constitutional and what is not. The sources used for deciding the constitutionality of a case are the constitution and federal statues. While the case can be loosely tied in with the eighth amendment clause of “cruel and unusual punishment” there is no backing for the decision made. The Supreme Court with this case decided that it did not overturn the previous case of Stanford v. Kentucky, which ruled on this same issue fifteen years earlier. Yet the court stated that the prevailing moral code had altered therefore they changed their opinion. The truly shocking issue with this is that the neither law nor constitution had changed regarding this issue in the interceding fifteen years. The grave problem with this case is that the Supreme Court used the case of Roper V. Simmons to create law based of invalid sources.
`Roper v. Simmons is a case involving the sentencing of death to juvenile offenders. The case involved Chris Simmons who was seventeen years old when he committed murder. Simmons had entered the home of a woman named Shirley Crook. Simmons then tied the Crook up before he ultimately threw her off a bridge. Crook was alive when Simmons threw her off the bridge after covering...

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...ump up unjustified support for their moral concern. The holding issued in this case violated a very essential part of American law: jurisprudence.

Works Cited

Death Penalty Information Center . (2013, Nov. 20). Retrieved from States With and Without the Death Penalty : http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/states-and-without-death-penalty
Denno, D. W. (2006). The Scientific Shortcomings of Roper v. Simmons. Retrieved from : http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/116
Myers, W. (2006). Roper v. Simmons: The Collision of National Consensus and Proportionality Review. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-) , 96 (3), 947-994.
Roper v. Simmons , 543 U. S. ____ (Supreme Court 2004).
The Harvard Law Review Association. (2005). The Debate over Foreign Law in Roper v. Simmons. Harvard Law Review , 119 (1), 103-108.
US Constitution Article III Section 2.