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Assessing Senator Kennedy's sentencing reform legacy

By Douglas A. Berman

As reported here, Senator Edward Kennedy passed away last night at the age of 77. Though I doubt the mainstream media will talk much, if at all, about his foundational role in federal sentencing reform efforts, I will always think of Senator Kennedy as one of the driving forces behind the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.  In a future post, I may try to put together a mini-bibliography of some of Senator Kennedy's writings and advocacy in the area. In this post, however, I would like to hear from readers about what Senator Kennedy's sentencing reform legacy should be in light of what the SRA became, and also given Senator Kennedy failure to prevent Congress from regularly adopting mandatory minimum sentencing statutes that seem in tension with various key principles of the SRA...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on August 26, 2009 (boomark / email).