Fans of the Eighth Amendment’s ban against excessive fines now have explicit protection from overreaching state governments. Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute explains.
It’s gratifying that the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause applies to the states, meaning that states can’t fine you in a way that’s wholly disproportionate to the offense you commit. As one of the long-established natural rights in the Anglo-American legal tradition, there’s no reason it wouldn’t be and the debates over the Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification support this conclusion. …
… At the same time, it’s disappointing that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas were the only ones who explained, in separate concurrences, that the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause is the more constitutionally faithful way of extending rights as against state infringement. (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s majority opinion, joined by all but Justice Thomas, used the Due Process Clause.)
We’ll have to wait for some more difficult/less clear case to see if anyone else joins that originalist refrain. For practical purposes, it may not matter which clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides the mechanism by which the Excessive Fines Clause is applied to the states. But it certainly matters for unenumerated rights (those not listed in the Bill of Rights), the jurisprudence regarding is confusing and controversial. If the Fourteenth Amendment ratification debates elucidate which such rights are covered under which clause, that would be important.