HeyJaredBehind The Bench Newsletter
The latest on state supreme courts, constitutions, & how they shape the criminal legal system
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 3
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- Aug 14, 2026
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- Jul 22, 2026
Latest issues
Litigation Update: SLRI Files Amicus Briefs In California, Illinois, & Oregon (opens the original)
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The State Law Research Initiative (SLRI) this summer filed amicus briefs in three states supporting state constitutional claims against excessive prison terms and needlessly severe conditions of confinement. Together, the briefs present both general and state-specific tools to analyze state antipunishment rights—including arguments based on text, history, related state legislation, social and neuroscientific evidence, and the implications of a federalist system in which states exert primary cont
The Michigan Supreme Court Continues To Show How It's Done (opens the original)
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Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court made headlines when it held that all mandatory life without parole (LWOP) sentences for young people under 21 violate the state’s “cruel or unusual” punishment clause, joining the Washington and Massachusetts high courts. That may have been its most consequential or at least prominent recent decision, but this isn’t a one issue court. Again and again, the Michigan Supreme Court has shown how rigorous and independent state constitutional analysis—rather than
Drop What You’re Doing And Bask In This State Supreme Court Justice’s Latest Broadside Against The U.S. Supreme Court (opens the original)
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More than any other judge in America, Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins has consistently rebuked the U.S. Supreme Court’s far-right supermajority as nakedly partisan and committed only to its own ideological agenda. This insistence on putting policy over legal principles, Eddins has argued, underscores the need to independently interpret Hawaii’s Constitution and protect individual rights that go well beyond the “federal floor”—a floor, he points out, “that keeps sinking.” He has done thi
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