Not just a wordsmith, at which he had few equals, the third president of the United States was a whiz at math, philosophy, history, and the languages (he was proficient in French, Latin and Greek). And that was just as a college student at the College of William and Mary.
The Eighth Amendment (Amendment VIII) of the United States Constitution prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this amendment's Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause also applies to the states.
ment and that the Framers intended âcruel and unusualâ to refer to. certain methods of punishment. This Note insists, however, that one cannot effectively discuss the. Eighth Amendment in terms of original intent without examining the. word that follows âcruel and unusualâ in the constitutional text. The system of âpunishmentsâ that existed at the time of the Founding was fundamentally different from that which exists today.8 The Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause was written in the context of a system that relied to a large extent on public participation in punishments.