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"DOJ's Attack on Federal Judicial Leniency, the Supreme Court's Response, and the Future of Criminal Sentencing"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this great-looking new article appearing on SSRN from Professors Susan Klein and Sandra Guerra Thompson.  Here is part of the piece's abstract: The last few years have brought some equilibrium to the power struggle in the federal system between prosecutors, judges, and Congress over criminal sentencing.  Though pieces of this story have been shared and various Supreme Court sentencing cases analyzed, our unique contribution is to explain how and why a true sentencing reform movement that began in the mid-1980's was co-opted by conservative politics at the federal level at the turn of this century, thereby eliminating one avenue of change entirely for all federal and state actors.... As a result of the last few terms, many of the recent victories that the Department enjoyed in the political arena it lost in the courts...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on June 16, 2009 (boomark / email).