Scott covered the important points in his post about the Supreme Court’s decision today in Gall and Kimbrough. Boiled down, the Court in these cases says that it meant what it said in Booker: the Sentencing Guidelines are just that — suggestions — and federal judges are not mandated to apply them. The decision today […]
Tag: Supreme Court
I’m guessing Bean will have more to say about this, but the Supreme Court today held in a 7-2 decision that lower court judges are permitted not to apply federal sentencing guidelines (including
Unfortunately, other professional responsibilities have prevented me from reading the full transcripts yet, so I’ve only heard the highlights so far (I’ll have more when I read them in ful
The Supreme Court has decided to hear an appeal to the D.C. Circuit decision striking down D.C.’s handguns ban. I’ll have more discussion about this later, but to stimulate discussion in the interim I’ll say that 1)the most plausible interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, I think, confers an individual right to bear arms, although this […]
I actually agree with two points that Ross Douthat makes here. First, I think that there’s a tendency to assume that Roe‘s popular support made its upholding inevitable, but this really is
It’s all but official: the Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for a prisoner in Mississippi, “and thus gave a nearly indisputable indication that a majority intends to block all exec
Via Roy, I see that conservatives are whining about the great day 20 years ago on which arch-reactionary Robert Bork was justly rejected by the Senate. First if all, it’s worth repeating that in this case the Senate functioned as it should, focusing on constitutional philosophy rather than trivial details, and that attempts to turn […]
I have been meaning to comment for a while on this very strange Slate article. Ezra raises the most salient objection: it’s absolutely crazy to think that the Republicans, in the current context