2. It is absolutely wrong to consult prevailing international standards or current European chic to interpret our Constitution, including the Eighth Amendment. It is so wrong that it is disgusting.
I don't recall which decisions exactly, but sometime in the last year or so at least one of the justices on the USSC (Stevens?) have referred to some international law stuff... I think it may have been with regard to the death penalty somehow.
As though the meaning of the term "unusual" can be correctly interpreted without wide knowledge of what is "usual."