It makes no sense that we’ve been able to remove ourselves from an eighteenth-century view of who gets punished but remain locked in an eighteenth-century view of how to punish people. That goes beyond the death penalty. For instance, some form of solitary confinement has been viewed as a fairly standard and appropriate punishment since forever. But now, with our modern understanding of, you know, human psychology, studies suggest that solitary confinement is especially cruel. It’s torture for your brain. James Madison did not understand this and likely wouldn’t have cared if he did. Why in
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