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"Into the Twilight Zone: Informing Judicial Discretion in Federal Sentencing"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this interesting-looking new article by Professor Mary Kreiner Ramirez that I just came across via SSRN. Heres is the abstract: Recent changes in federal sentencing have shifted discretionary decision-making back to federal district court judges, while appellate courts review challenged sentences for reasonableness. Each judge brings considerable legal experience and qualifications to the bench, however, cultural experiences cannot necessarily prepare judges for the range of persons or situations they will address on the bench. Social psychologists who have studied social cognition have determined that the human brain creates categories and associations resulting in implicit biases and associations that are often unconscious or subconscious...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 12, 2009 (boomark / email).