The prisoners write in carefully lettered script or on old electric typewriters. There are sometimes grammatical errors or misspellings. But the language is direct. They describe facing Stage 4 cancer ...

A group of homeless plaintiffs argue that local laws aimed at banning sleeping outside violated their constitutional rights. The city claims that’s not what the Eighth Amendment means. By Abbie ...

In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of Supreme Court decisions and a new law sought to curb "frivolous" prisoner lawsuits and give more deference to prison officials. Together, they changed the legal ...

Six years ago, in Timbs v. Indiana, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a majority opinion that pointed out the origins of the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause and the original ...

Editor's note: This is a regular feature on issues related to the Constitution and civics education written by Paul G. Summers, retired judge and state attorney general. The U.S. Constitution is the ...

We analyzed nearly 1,500 cases to obtain data on prisoner litigation. We found that constitutional protections have been dramatically weakened. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of Supreme Court ...