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New scholarship complaining that reasonableness review is now quite unreasonable

By Douglas A. Berman

Now appearing on SSRN is this notable forthcoming article discussing the mess that is reasonableness review of federal sentences in the circuits.  The piece is titled "When ?Reasonableness? is Not so Reasonable: The Need to Restore Clarity to the Appellate Review of Federal Sentencing Decisions after Rita, Gall, and Kimbrough," and here is the abstract: Judges, like anyone else who works for a living, need standards.  Judges need to know what rules to apply, when to apply them, and who to apply them to.  And judges, just like you or I, want to know how their work will be reviewed.  Unfortunately, in many circuits, federal district court judges do not know how, or even if, their work will be reviewed by appellate courts in the context of criminal sentencing decisions...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 16, 2010 (boomark / email).