Sample thesis and outline

What's a thesis statement?

Sample introduction/thesis statement

Title 22, section 15 of the Oklahoma Statutes (2011) provides that “no person can be . . . subjected before conviction to any more restraint than is necessary for his detention to answer the charge, and in no event shall he be tried before a jury while in chains or shackles (emphasis added). The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals recently interpreted and applied this statute in Sanchez v. State (2009). This paper will examine the court’s opinion, focusing on the history of this interesting statute; its application in the Sanchez case; and the potential impact of the statute, and Sanchez, in future cases.

Sample preliminary outline

  1. Sanchez v. State discussion
  2. History of the prohibition against restraints
  3. Earlier cases cited in Sanchez
  4. Application of case law to principles to facts in Sanchez
  5. A procedure to enforce the statute
  6. Harmless of reversible error for violation of the statute?
  7. Conclusion

Sample thesis #2

The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits the state and federal government from imposing cruel and unusual punishments, including torture. The Supreme Court has also interpreted the Eighth Amendment to bar otherwise legal punishments in certain circumstances. According to the Supreme Court:

A punishment is excessive and unconstitutional if it makes no measurable contribution to acceptable goals of punishment and hence is nothing more than the purposeless and needless imposition of pain and suffering; or is grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime (Coker v. Georgia, 1977).

Following this principle, the Supreme Court has exempted specific offenders in some circumstances from the punishments of death and life without parole. These exemptions can be based on the type of crime (Coker v. Georgia, 1977, Kennedy v. Louisiana, 2008); age (Roper v. Simmons, 2005, Miller v. Alabama, 2012); and mental state (Atkins v. Virginia, 2002, Ford v. Wainwright, 1986). The United States Supreme Court has interpreted the Cruel and Unusual Clause of the Eighth Amendment in a multitude of cases. This paper examines several Supreme Court cases imposing these categorical exemptions, discussing how the Supreme Court applied these restrictions, and considering how they may apply to future cases.