Adult Time for Adult Crime: America Has No Global Duty to Ban Juvenile Life Sentences

Cully Stimson / November 02, 2009

Many opponents of life without parole for juvenile offenders claim that the continued use of this sentence puts the United States in breach of its obligations under international law. Specifically, they name three treaties as barring the administration of this sentence in the United States: the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention Against Torture.

All of these assertions are false.

Increasingly, political activists have been using the aspirational language that is often present in international agreements to advance their domestic political agendas, especially when their causes fail to win support in the United States among voters and legislators. As described above, some activists and academics go further, claiming that the laws of foreign nations, as opposed to treaties that the United States may have signed, ratified, and implemented, should determine the meaning of domestic laws and even the U.S. Constitution. (more…)