Explain how the Bill of Rights promotes a just legal system.

As noted above, fully half of the Bill of Rights is dedicated to listing explicit guarantees for individuals accused of committing crimes. While this might seem excessive, the Framers had fresh memories of a government that accused people of crimes they did not commit and then convicted them in unfair trials. Consequently, they went to great lengths to assure that the new government they established would not engage in such practices. Toward that end, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights guarantee a series of important protections for individuals accused of committing crimes in the United States.

No Excessive, Cruel, or Unusual Fines or Punishments

The Eighth Amendment forbids the government from imposing excessive bail, fines, or “cruel and unusual” punishments. Given the era during which the Eighth Amendment was drafted and ratified, one of its obvious intents was to prohibit torture. Under the limitations imposed by the Constitution, penalties for crimes may include fines or incarceration but not excessively painful or physically harmful penalties such as whippings or branding, both common practices in the 1700s. The Court has also interpreted the Eighth Amendment to prohibit imprisonment in unsanitary or inhumane conditions. However, the Court has been reluctant to define such conditions too broadly. In Rhodes v. Chapman (1981), the Court reversed a lower court’s decision that declared “double celling,” the housing of two prisoners in one small cell, was unconstitutional:

The double celling made necessary by the unanticipated increase in prison population did not lead to deprivations of essential food, medical care, or sanitation. Nor did it increase violence among inmates or create other conditions intolerable for prison confinement. Although job and educational opportunities diminished marginally as a result of double celling, limited work hours and delay before receiving education do not inflict pain, much less unnecessary and wanton pain; deprivations of this kind simply are not punishments. We would have to wrench the Eighth Amendment from its language and history to hold that delay of these desirable aids to rehabilitation violates the Constitution.

One of the most important standards the Court has used in determining whether a punishment or fine violates the Eighth Amendment is a test of proportionality. The Court has ruled that, under certain circumstances, the death penalty may be a “cruel and unusual” punishment, but only where it is not proportionate to the crime committed.