Foucha v. Louisiana

As incarceration of persons is the most common and one of the most feared instruments of state oppression and state indifference, we ought to acknowledge at the outset that freedom from this restraint is essential to the basic definition of liberty in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution. I agree with the Court’s reaffirmation of this first premise. But I submit with all respect that the majority errs in its failure to recognize that the conditions for incarceration imposed by the State in this case are in accord with legitimate and traditional state interests, vindicated…