In a 2019 opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed to call for a wholesale rethinking of the Supreme Court’s approach to excessive punishments. | Melina Mara/Getty Images Nearly a quarter century ago, in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional to execute offenders with an intellectual disability. Next Wednesday, however, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a new case, Hamm v. Smith, which tests whether the Court’s current Republican majority wishes to retain this limit on capital punishment. The most likely outcome in Hamm is probably a decision...

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