George Will is right that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is right about the dubious constitutionality of punishing prisoners with long periods of solitary confinement.

From Cafe Hayek. 

"Punishment that causes durable impairments of the punished person’s brain surely violates the Constitution’s Eight Amendment proscription of “cruel and unusual punishments.” So, last week the Supreme Court’s three “liberal” justices rightly dissented against the six “conservative” justices’ decision not to hear a case concerning the all-too-common prison practice of protracted solitary confinement.

…..

Conservatives, ever apprehensive about the abuses of power to which empowered people always and everywhere are susceptible, should be acutely alert about potential abuses of prisoners, who exist at the state’s mercy, behind high walls and nontransparent procedures.

The Eighth Amendment makes originalists fainthearted. Spare us sermons about the public meaning of “cruelty” in 1790: No court today would sanction some punishments (e.g., flogging, branding, mutilation, the pillory) practiced when the amendment was ratified. Prolonged solitary confinement was not imposed then. Today, however, protracted isolation is far from “unusual”; it is now traditional and common. But the amendment’s original meaning that matters is: We shall not countenance government-inflicted cruelty.

The court majority’s dereliction of duty regarding Johnson illustrates how the labels ”liberal” and “conservative” can be inapposite in judicial contexts. The conservatives showed undue deference to government; the liberals correctly construed precedent and the Constitution’s original public meaning."