Roper v. Simmons is a perfect example of the evolving role of the Supreme Court. The sources used by the Supreme Court to make its decision in this case are quite questionable. Although I agree with the Supreme Court on protecting young American citizens, the Supreme Court must have the law to support its decision. Although in this case that was not the case, the Supreme Court used a combination of foreign policy, moral decency, and state law as the legal basis for this decision. None of these things constitute an appropriate source for deciding what is constitutional and what is not. The sources used to decide the constitutionality of a case are the Constitution and federal statutes. Although the case may be loosely related to the Eighth Amendment's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause, the ruling has no support. In this case, the Supreme Court decided that it did not overturn Stanford v. Kentucky, which had ruled on the same question fifteen years earlier. Yet the court said the prevailing moral code had changed and so he had a change of heart. The truly shocking problem is that neither the law nor the constitution has changed on this issue in the intervening fifteen years. The serious problem with this case is that the Supreme Court used the Roper V. Simmons case to create a law based on invalid sources. “Roper v. Simmons is a case involving the death penalty for juvenile offenders. The case involved Chris Simmons, who was seventeen when he committed the murder. Simmons had entered the home of a woman named Shirley Crook. Simmons then tied up the crook before finally throwing her off a bridge. Crook was alive when Simmons threw her off the bridge after she covered... middle of paper... unwarranted support for their moral concern. The ruling in this case violated a very essential part of American law: case law. Works Cited Death Penalty Information Center. (November 20, 2013). Retrieved from States With and Without the Death Penalty: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/states-and-without-death-penalty Denno, D. W. (2006). The scientific shortcomings of Roper v. Simmons. Retrieved from: http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/116Myers, W. (2006). Roper v. Simmons: The Collision of National Consensus and Proportionality Consideration. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 96 (3), 947-994. Roper v. Simmons, 543 US ____ (Supreme Court 2004). The Harvard Law Review Association. (2005). The foreign law debate in Roper v. Simmons. Harvard Law Review, 119 (1), 103-108. United States Constitution, Article III, Section 2.