"[4][2][1] According to a 1971 article published in The University of Chicago Law Review, in Holt v. Sarver (1969) (300 U.S. 825 (1969)), Judge J. Smith Henley ruled that the "entire Arkansas penitentiary system prison, as then operated, constituted cruel and unusual punishment"[5] and that some aspects of the system were unconstitutional and ordered administrators to implement changes and report on progress towards implementation.

[6] According to an October 1978 article in the American Bar Association Journal, the ten-year long litigation against the Arkansas Department of Correction in Supreme Court Hutto v. Finney 437 U.S. 678 (1978) began in 1969.

SCOTUS determined that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the practice of using punitive isolation for more than 30 days.

[8][9] This case involved a challenge to the practice of "punitive isolation" in Arkansas prisons which was often done for indiscriminate periods of time in crowded windowless cells.

1968), in which then-judge Harry Blackmun abolished corporal punishment in Arkansas' penitentiary system, "constituted a leading precedent in the application of the recently-incorporated Eighth Amendment to prison practices.

All of the findings of unconstitutionality of the Arkansas prison system as cruel and unusual punishment by the district court had either been affirmed or never challenged".

[8] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others filed amicus briefs "urging affirmance" in support of the Respondent.