United states: The surprising role of the CRC in a non-state-party

Abstract

The unlikely element of success in the US campaigns challenging the juvenile death penalty and extreme sentencing of children is the express recognition, by the US Supreme Court in two germinal cases, of the standards of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the role of international human rights law, and the practices of other nations. Strategies to abolish the juvenile death penalty in the US included coalition-building, education, legislation and litigation. This campaign culminated in the 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision, which held that the execution of children (persons under the age of 18 years at the time of the crime) violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Citing article 37 of the CRC, the Roper opinion included an extraordinary section elucidating the US global isolation in implementing the juvenile death penalty. Subsequent Supreme Court cases address the extreme sentencing of juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole (JLWOP). In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Court concluded that sentencing a child to JLWOP for a non-homicide felony is unconstitutional and reaffirmed the role of, and global support for, the CRC. Miller v. Alabama (2012) held that mandatory JLWOP sentences, which do not permit consideration of the age and circumstances of child offenders, are also unconstitutional.