Opinion ID: 1992117
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: characteristics of punishment

Text: Halper provided a procedural framework for this determination: a reviewing court, burdened with the task of determining whether a civil sanction qualifies as punishment, must perform a particularized assessment of the penalty imposed and purposes that the penalty may fairly be said to serve. Halper, 490 U.S. at 448, 109 S.Ct. at 1901. The Court ruled that a civil penalty should bear a rational relation to the goal of remedying the government's claimed malady, and should not [appear] to qualify as `punishment' in the plain meaning of the word. 490 U.S. at 449, 109 S.Ct. at 1902. This language is instructive to the question of whether the true purpose of ALR looks more like a remedy or more like punishment.