Supreme Court To Decide Eighth Amendment Issue

Some of you may remember my post about the cert petition in Kennedy v. Louisiana, and the question of whether the “evolving national consensus” theory of the Eighth Amendment only goes in one direction – that is, if it’s true that the action of some states to ban a punishment in a particular context (here, the death penalty for child rape) transmutes that punishment into a “cruel and unusual” one for constitutional purposes where it was not before, is it also true that more states adding that punishment can make it not cruel and unusual?
Well, today the Court granted cert in Kennedy, so the Court will be faced with that question, among others.