Eighth Amendment:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

The Court has looked unfavorably on divestiture of citizenship as a punishment. In Trop v. Dulles, the Court held divestiture of the citizenship of a natural born citizen to be cruel and unusual punishment.1 The Court viewed divestiture of citizenship as a penalty “more primitive than torture,” because it entailed statelessness or “the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society.” 2 The Court commented that: “The question is whether [a] penalty subjects the individual to a fate forbidden by the principle of civilized treatment guaranteed by the Eighth Amendment.” 3 The Court further reasoned that a punishment must be examined “in light of the basic prohibition against inhuman treatment,” and that the Eighth Amendment was intended to preserve the “basic concept . . . [of] the dignity of man” by assuring that the power to impose punishment is “exercised within the limits of civilized standards.” 4

Footnotes

1

356 U.S. 86 (1958). Again the Court was divided. Four Justices joined the plurality opinion while Justice William Brennan concurred on the ground that the requisite relation between the severity of the penalty and legitimate purpose under the war power was not apparent. Id. at 114. Four Justices dissented, denying that denationalization was a punishment and arguing that instead it was merely a means by which Congress regulated discipline in the armed forces. Id. at 121, 124–27.

2

Id. at 101.

3

Id. at 99.

4

Id. at 100, 101 n.32. The action of prison guards in handcuffing a prisoner to a hitching post for long periods of time violated basic human dignity and constituted “gratuitous infliction of ‘wanton and unnecessary pain’” prohibited by the clause. Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730, 738 (2002).