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"Debacle: How the Supreme Court Has Mangled American Sentencing Law And How It Might Yet Be Mended

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the title of this new article on SSRN from Professor Frank Bowman. I consider everything Frank writes to be a must-read, but this 100-page magnum opus seems especially worthy of attention.  Here is the abstract: This Article argues that the line of Supreme Court Sixth Amendment jury right cases that began with McMillan v. Pennsylvania in 1986, crescendoed in Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker in 2004-2005, and continued in 2009 in cases such as Oregon v. Ice, has been a colossal judicial failure.  First, the Court has failed to provide a logically coherent, constitutionally based answer to the fundamental question of what limits the Constitution places on the roles played by the institutional actors in the criminal justice system...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 10, 2009 (boomark / email).