The Significance Of The 8th Amendment

The 8th Amendment has a historical significance, including the time before the amendment was attached to the Bill of Rights, the interpretation of the 8th Amendment, and how the amendment affects today’s generations is very relevant. This amendment officially states in the Constitution, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” (Annotated Constitution Eighth Amendment). This article is about the government mandating that punishments are not allowed when they are cruel or unusual. “…; but it is safe to affirm that punishments of torture [such as drawing and quartering, emboweling alive, beheading, public dissecting, and burning alive], and all the others in the same line
The history of this article dates back to England and to their Bill of Rights in 1689. Titus Oates sparked the idea of the 8th Amendment. “…the case in England of Titus Oates, who was tried by the court system for multiple acts of perjury, which led to the executions of many people whom Oates had wrongly accused of grave crimes. The subsequent punishment of Oates involved ordinary penalties which were collectively imposed in a brutal and excessive manner” (An Overview of the 8th Amendment). The case of Oates triggered the idea of the 8th Amendment due to the cruel and unusual thoughts of the punishments he imposed on for people. Virginia was the first state to take on the provision, “for it was included in the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776” (An Overview of the 8th Amendment). When the Constitution was soon ratified by the states, the Bill of Rights was not attached to the document meaning that those protections were not added until the Constitution was fully ratified in December of 1787 on the 7th of that month (Stevenson and Stinneford). The federal government had more hierarchy when the Constitution came into
As like any decision made into a government in the citizens who opposed the Constitution were frighten on if the federal government with their new powers to then have the Congress to allow those kind of punishments to tyrannize the citizens of their new found country (Stevenson and Stinneford). It would in quote from the article in the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by Bryan A. Stevenson and John F. Stinneford “’They are nowhere restrained from inventing the most cruel and unheard-of punishments, and annexing them to crimes; and there is no constitutional check on them, but that racks and gibbets may be amongst the most mild instruments of their discipline.’ Patrick Henry asserted.” Soon as the debates on about the punishments being barbaric and that it was an argument of oppression. Soon the article was ratified in December 15, 1791 that the 8th Amendment was now fully apart of the Bill of Rights along with the first