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How a new administration is likely to impact federal sentencing practice

By Douglas A. Berman

It likely will be some time before anyone can predict how an Obama Administration might seek to alter federal sentencing law and policy.  (The naming of a new Attorney General and other key DOJ appointments may provide some signals, but the federal sentencing system is probably a low priority matter compared to other key crime and justice concerns.)  However, if past is prologue, we can already start to predict ways in which the incoming administration might impact federal sentencing practice. During the Clinton Administration, as Frank Bowman and Michael Heise effectively document in their Quiet Rebellion articles (abstract here), there was a discernible tendency for front-line sentencing actors to exercise their discretion in favor of leniency in federal drug cases...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on November 10, 2008 (boomark / email).