would then "rest on quicksand". Kennedy's "narrow proportionality principle" Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices O'Connor and Souter, attempted to forge a middle ground between the positions of Justices Scalia and White. Justice Kennedy argued that "stare decisis counsels our adherence to the narrow proportionality principle that has existed in our Eighth Amendment jurisprudence for 80 years." Under Kennedy's formulation of the proportionality principle, Harmelin's sentence could stand, along with the possibility that an equally harsh sentence for a less severe crime might not. As an initial matter, Kennedy identified four principles that undergird the Eighth Amendment's proportionality principle as he understood it. First, "the fixing of prison terms for specific crimes involves a substantive penological judgment that, as a general matter, is properly within the province of legislatures, not courts." Second, the Eighth Amendment does not mandate the adoption of one theory of punishment over another—states are free to tailor their punishments to meet the needs of either a deterrence rationale, a retribution rationale, or both or some other rationale. Third, in light of these first two principles, there is bound to be some variation of punishments between and within particular jurisdictions. Thus, the intra- and interjurisdictional comparison required by the Solem test would frequently prove unworkable. Fourth, any proportionality analysis required by the Eighth Amendment should be informed by objective factors to the maximum possible extent. Justice Kennedy pointed to the two aspects of Harmelin's sentence that might cause difficulty under the Eighth Amendment—the severity of the sentence, along with its mandatory nature. Life without parole is the second most severe sentence known to American law, after the death penalty. Yet Harmelin's crime was more severe than the crime at issue in Solem. In Solem, the Court struck down a life-without-parole sentence imposed for the crime of uttering a no-account check; Harmelin, however, was convicted of possessing 650 grams of cocaine. Uttering is "one of the most passive felonies a person could commit." The illegal drug trade, by contrast, begets a tremendous amount of violence. In view of these observations, a legislature could rationally conclude that a life sentence without parole is appropriate to deter others from distributing cocaine and to achieve an appropriate amount of retribution. Because Harmelin's crime was more serious than the crimes involved in other cases where the Court had confronted the constitutionality of a life sentence, Kennedy reasoned that it might be appropriate to