Supreme Court Research: David Stras has posted links to two new SSRN papers discussing the Supreme Court. The first paper, "Modern Departures from the U.S. Supreme Court: Party, Pensions, or Power," is written by Santa Clara University professors Terri Peretti and Alan Rozzi. According to Stras, Peretti and Rozzi found that Justices do not "strategically retire in order to ensure
an ideologically-desirable successor." The paper's abstract tells us that the study revealed that "an
important consideration is their role and influence on the Court,
suggesting that, at least when it comes to retirement decisions,
Supreme Court justices care more about power than party and policy." We at CJLF are not too sure that any overall statement can be made. It seems pretty clear that Chief Justice Burger and Justice White timed their retirements with an eye on the President appointing their successors, while Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Marshall did not. The second paper Stras summarizes is on certiorari and Indian law.
Should Nine Years On the Run Lessen Your Sentence?: At Blog of the Legal Times, Denzil White should receive a reduced sentence for his drug charge because "White had remained out of trouble during the decade he had just spent on the run." Thankfully, neither the federal prosecutor nor U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina bought the argument. Judge Urbina sentenced White to three years for failing to appear at a sanctions hearing after he violated the terms of his plea deal for marijuana trafficking.
DOJ May Not Change Federal Sentencing Policy Anytime Soon: At Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman finds little hope for federal sentencing reform in this post discussing New York Time's article "Justice Dept. Under Obama is Preparing for Doctinal Shift in Policies of Bush Years." While Berman wishes that "the triage plan for change at DOJ" would tackle federal sentencing up front, we're not as upset that it appears the DOJ will start with "terrorism policies and then turns to civil rights issues."
More Commentary on the Exclusionary Rule and Herring: Amir Efrati, at Wall Street Journal Blog, posts more on Adam Liptak's New York Times article discussing the exclusionary rule. Kent's weekend post on the article can be found here. Efrati's WSJ blog post directs to Efrati's Wall Street Journal story discussing the argument that getting rid of the exclusionary rule might lessen the incentive for police officers to lie about how evidence was seized.
Should Nine Years On the Run Lessen Your Sentence?: At Blog of the Legal Times, Denzil White should receive a reduced sentence for his drug charge because "White had remained out of trouble during the decade he had just spent on the run." Thankfully, neither the federal prosecutor nor U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina bought the argument. Judge Urbina sentenced White to three years for failing to appear at a sanctions hearing after he violated the terms of his plea deal for marijuana trafficking.
DOJ May Not Change Federal Sentencing Policy Anytime Soon: At Sentencing Law and Policy, Doug Berman finds little hope for federal sentencing reform in this post discussing New York Time's article "Justice Dept. Under Obama is Preparing for Doctinal Shift in Policies of Bush Years." While Berman wishes that "the triage plan for change at DOJ" would tackle federal sentencing up front, we're not as upset that it appears the DOJ will start with "terrorism policies and then turns to civil rights issues."
More Commentary on the Exclusionary Rule and Herring: Amir Efrati, at Wall Street Journal Blog, posts more on Adam Liptak's New York Times article discussing the exclusionary rule. Kent's weekend post on the article can be found here. Efrati's WSJ blog post directs to Efrati's Wall Street Journal story discussing the argument that getting rid of the exclusionary rule might lessen the incentive for police officers to lie about how evidence was seized.
Long ago, most of us were taught to avoid run-on sentences. Avoiding on-run sentences is also a good idea.