Thomas, J., concurring in judgement
request from Parliament, the King pardoned Oates. Id., at 1329–1330.
Writing a few years before our Constitution was adopted, Blackstone–“whose works constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,” Alden v. Maine, 527 U. S. 706, 715 (1999)–explained that the prohibition on excessive fines contained in the English Bill of Rights “had a retrospect to some unprecedented proceedings in the court of king’s bench.” 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries 372 (1769). Blackstone confirmed that this prohibition was “only declaratory… of the old constitutional law of the land,” which had long “regulated” the “discretion” of the courts in imposing fines. Ibid.
In sum, at the time of the founding, the prohibition on excessive fines was a longstanding right of Englishmen.
B
“As English subjects, the colonists considered themselves to be vested with the same fundamental rights as other Englishmen,” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 816 (opinion of Thomas, J.), including the prohibition on excessive fines. E. g., J. Dummer, A Defence of the New-England Charters 16–17 (1721) (“The Subjects Abroad claim the Privilege of Magna Charta, which says that no Man shall be fin’d above the Nature of his Offence, and whatever his Miscarriage be, a Salvo Contenemento suo is to be observ’d by the Judge”). Thus, the text of the Eighth Amendment was “ ‘based directly on… the Virginia Declaration of Rights,’ which ‘adopted verbatim the language of the English Bill of Rights.’ ” Browning-Ferris Industries of Vt., Inc. v. Kelco Disposal, Inc., 492 U. S. 257, 266 (1989) (quoting Solem v. Helm, 463 U. S. 277, 285, n. 10 (1983)); see Jones v. Commonwealth, 5 Va. 555, 557 (1799) (opinion of Carrington, J.) (explaining that the clause in the Virginia Declaration of Rights embodied the traditional legal understanding that any “fine or amercement ought
