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Attacking the federal sentencing guidelines based on moral obligations

By Douglas A. Berman

"A Personal Affair: Moral Obligation and the New Common Law of Sentencing" is the title of this new piece on SSRN authored by Hans Grong.  Here is the abstract: Sentencing has a tortured history in the federal system.  The Sixth Amendment, due process, and separation-of-powers problems with the current sentencing regime have been extensively documented.  But this Article deals with a different problem.  This Article deals with the moral failure of the federal sentencing regime.  This Article contend that the current system of federal sentencing fails to treat defendants as human beings and, as such, fails to fulfill its moral obligation to impose just sentences.  As a response, this Article proposes a new paradigm for federal sentencing.  This Article outlines a federal sentencing regime based on guided, principled judicial discretion, which I refer to as "the new common law of sentencing...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 04, 2009 (boomark / email).