Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Carla Wong McMillian (from left), Supreme Court Justice Keith Blackwell and Court of Appeals Chief Judge Stephen Dillard review GSU Law students research results. (Photo: Judy Ondrey/GSU Law)
Five Georgia appellate judges visited a Georgia State University College of Law seminar recently to evaluate an innovative new big-data tool for ascertaining the original meaning of oft-contested words in the U.S. Constitution and other historic legal texts.
Law students in the seminar on judicial power came up with results that might surprise some Constitutional originalists: In proscribing ”cruel” punishment in the Eighth Amendment, for instance, the framers’ aim may have been to prevent the state’s abuse of power as much as physical pain.
