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"  Sifting through the opinions handed down by the Supreme Court on Monday, we discover that Chief Justice John Roberts, who is going to be Chief Justice from now until the Horsemen ride because Democrats decided to fold like cheap suits during the last administration, was not pleased with the majority of his colleagues when the latter determined that mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders were contrary to the Eighth Amendment&amp;#039;s guarantees against cruel and usual punishment. This is what the only Chief Justice we have argued in opposition: Here, the Court excuses the high number of actual sentences by citing the high number of statutes imposing it. To say that a sentence may be considered unusual because so many legislatures approve it stands precedent on its head. In other words, if enough states impose a cruel punishment, it cannot offend against the Eighth Amendment because it is no longer unusual. If we had 28 states that re-established, say, flogging, presumably The Chief would find that constitutionally permissible because it had become so common. He also felt his colleagues were insufficiently considerate of the fee-fees of state legislators. Nor do we display our usual respect for elected officials by asserting that legislators have accidentally required2,000 teenagers to spend the rest of their lives in jail. This, I would remind you, is the same Chief who, on the very same day he handed down this dissent, led the majority in blowing up a popular, bipartisan campaign-finance law in Montana that had stood the state in good stead for a flat fking century.  We are so very screwed. (Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr/Special to The Politics Blog) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14589/john-roberts-8th-amendment-10059358/>