Professor Joel Johnson Interviewed on Supreme Court Case City of Grants Pass v. Johnson -- World Radio

Professor Joel S. Johnson is interviewed on the World Radio program "The World and Everything in It: July 21, 2025" about the constitutional law issues in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, last year's Supreme Court decision on homelessness.

Excerpt from "The World and Everything in It: July 21, 2025" 

EICHER: If the place of the court is to get into the muck, its job is to get into the muck of the law and constitutional principles. For example: The broad question of whether the camping bans are legal. And generally, when it comes to criminal laws like these, states are free to tailor them.

JOHNSON: States have a lot of latitude to define criminal liability however they want.

ROUGH: Joel Johnson is an attorney formerly with the Department of Justice, and now teaches at Caruso School of Law. He filed a friend-of-the court brief in the case. He says an Eighth Amendment challenge in the Grants Pass case may seem odd. Because—

JOHNSON: —the Eighth Amendment had been thought to apply only to issues related to what type of punishment could be imposed after someone had been found guilty of a crime.

ROUGH: Like methods of execution in death-penalty cases.

JOHNSON: It had not been previously understood to put limits on the front end of what could be made criminal in the first place.

The complete interview may be found at World Radio