William W. Berry III (University of Mississippi School of Law) has posted The Mandatory Meaning of Miller on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In June 2012, the United States Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment prohibited the imposition of mandatory life-without-parole sentences on juveniles. This case continued the Supreme Court’s slow but steady expansion of the scope of the Eighth Amendment over the past decade. 

In light of the Court’s decision in Miller to preclude mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles, this article explores the possibility of further expansion of the Eighth Amendment to proscribe other kinds of mandatory sentences. Applying the approach of the Court in Woodson and Miller to other contexts provides, at the very least, a basis to remedy some of the injustices created by mandatory sentences. 

Continue reading “Berry on Mandatory Sentences after Miller”