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"Apprendi Land Becomes Bizarro World"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is part of the cool title of this new paper now on SSRN from Benjamin Priester.  The full title of the piece is "Apprendi Land Becomes Bizarro World: ?Policy Nullification? and Other Surreal Doctrines in the New Constitutional Law of Sentencing," and here is the abstract: Imagine a final exam essay answer in constitutional law which sets forth doctrinal principles like the following: Decision-makers should preferably give vague explanations grounded in moral philosophy rather than specific explanations connected to particular findings.  Appellate review of trial court decision-making is unconstitutional.  Courts are entitled to substitute their own policy preferences for those enacted by the legislature on questions of non-constitutional law; in fact, it is probably unconstitutional to enact legislation expressly compelling courts to follow the legislature?s non-constitutional policy preferences...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on March 23, 2010 (boomark / email).