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.
The Supreme Court in the 1958 case of Trop v Dulles, expressly endorsed the view that what are prohibited cruel and unusual punishments should change over time, being those punishments which offend society's evolving sense of decency. The cases on this page suggest the wide variety of questions raised by the Eighth Amendment.