Appellate Inequality Is Not a Virtue: A Response to Brett Parker’s Is Death Different to Federal Judges?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Conklin
Keyword(s):  
Federal Judges

Second Looks at Sentences under the First Step Act

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-85
Author(s):  
Sarah French Russell
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Length ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Second Look ◽  
The People ◽  
The Law ◽  
Supervised Release ◽  
Federal Prisoners ◽  
Federal Judges ◽  
The Impact

Under the First Step Act of 2018, federal prisoners may now petition courts directly for reduction of their sentences, and judges may grant such requests if “extraordinary and compelling reasons” support reduction. Judges are also in the process of imposing reduced sentences in thousands of cases where the First Step Act has retroactively reduced statutory penalties. Not only does the First Step Act offer prisoners new opportunities for sentence reduction, but the law also may change how federal judges understand the impact of their sentencing decisions. Before now, in federal cases, judges rarely had the chance to take a second look at the prison sentences they (or their colleagues) imposed. Encounters between judges and the people they sentenced typically occurred only if a person violated the terms of supervised release after leaving prison. Now, judges can reassess sentence length while someone is still in prison and evaluate whether a reduction in the sentence is warranted. This newfound power allows judges to see their sentencing decisions in a new light and may influence how they conceive of the prison time they impose in future cases.

The Retirement of Federal Judges

1938 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Fairman
Keyword(s):  
Federal Judges

Supporting Responsive Federal Drug Sentencing Through Education in the Workshop on Science-Informed Decision Making

2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-22
Author(s):  
Hon. Nancy Gertner ◽  
Dr. Judith Edersheim ◽  
Dr. Robert Kinscherff ◽  
Cassandra Snyder
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Behavioral Science ◽  
Skills Training ◽  
Informed Decision ◽  
Probation Officers ◽  
Informed Decision Making ◽  
Sentencing Decisions ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Federal Districts ◽  
Federal Judges

On the federal level, judicial education in sentencing has been focused primarily on preparing judges to calculate and apply the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. But in an advisory guidelines context, making individualized assessments in drug cases requires education in the science of addictions, the drivers of behavior, and the prospects for behavior change when substances are involved. Neuroscience and the sciences of human behavior provide clarifying insight into substance-driven behaviors and cognitions that are routinely encountered in federal drug cases. These disciplines support individualized sentencing by shedding new light on the nature of inhibitory control, the reasonable expectations for relapse, and the distinctions that can be drawn based on science between different treatment interventions. In this Article, we report on the Workshop on Science-Informed Decision Making, an education initiative in the federal judiciary. Since 2016, it has provided education in neuroscience and behavioral science, as well as skills training in individualizing sentences using insights from that science, to U.S. district judges, magistrate judges, and pretrial services and probation officers in thirty-two federal districts. We describe the case-study-based instructional approach of the workshop, including some of the misconceptions about addiction behavior it addresses, and explain why we believe that this kind of education helps federal judges, and pretrial services and probation officers, craft more responsive sentencing decisions and recommendations.

Constitutional Dysfunction on Trial

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine Farrier
Keyword(s):  
Separation Of Powers ◽  
Public Deliberation ◽  
Federal System ◽  
War Powers ◽  
Everyday Politics ◽  
Federal Judges ◽  
Legislative Processes

In an original assessment of all three branches, this book reveals a new way in which the American federal system is broken. Turning away from the partisan narratives of everyday politics, the book diagnoses the deeper and bipartisan nature of imbalance of power that undermines public deliberation and accountability, especially on war powers. By focusing on the lawsuits brought by Congressional members that challenge presidential unilateralism, the book provides a new diagnostic lens on the permanent institutional problems that have undermined the separation of powers system in the last five decades, across a diverse array of partisan and policy landscapes. As each chapter demonstrates, member lawsuits are an outlet for frustrated members of both parties who cannot get their House and Senate colleagues to confront overweening presidential action through normal legislative processes. But these lawsuits often backfire—leaving Congress as an institution even more disadvantaged. The book argues these suits are more symptoms of constitutional dysfunction than the cure. It shows federal judges will not and cannot restore the separation of powers system alone. Fifty years of congressional atrophy cannot be reversed in court.

scholarly journals The Precipitous Decline in Reasoning and Other Key Abilities with Age and Its Implications for Federal Judges

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Alan S. Kaufman
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Functioning ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Computerized Adaptive Testing ◽  
Public Funding ◽  
Test Construction ◽  
Federal Judiciary ◽  
Visual Spatial ◽  
Federal Judges ◽  
The Impact

U. S. Supreme Court justices and other federal judges are, effectively, appointed for life, with no built-in check on their cognitive functioning as they approach old age. There is about a century of research on aging and intelligence that shows the vulnerability of processing speed, fluid reasoning, visual-spatial processing, and working memory to normal aging for men and women at all levels of education; even the maintained ability of crystallized knowledge declines in old age. The vulnerable abilities impact a person’s decision-making and problem solving; crystallized knowledge, by contrast, measures a person’s general knowledge. The aging-IQ data provide a rationale for assessing the key cognitive abilities of anyone who is appointed to the federal judiciary. Theories of multiple cognitive abilities and processes, most notably the Cattell-Horn-Carroll (CHC) model, provide a well-researched blueprint for interpreting the plethora of findings from studies of IQ and aging. Sophisticated technical advances in test construction, especially in item-response theory and computerized-adaptive testing, allow for the development of reliable and valid theory-based tests of cognitive functioning. Such assessments promise to be a potentially useful tool for evaluating federal judges to assess the impact of aging on their ability to perform at a level their positions deserve, perhaps to measure their competency to serve the public intelligently. It is proposed that public funding be made available to appoint a panel of experts to develop and validate an array of computerized cognitive tests to identify those justices who are at risk of cognitive impairment.

scholarly journals Independence of Russian Judges in Conditions of Irremovability of Judges

Lex Russica ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
V. К. Mikhailov
Keyword(s):  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Constitutional Court ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Vice Presidents ◽  
Supreme Courts ◽  
Special Procedure ◽  
Legal Principle ◽  
The Status ◽  
Appeal Courts ◽  
Federal Judges

The paper has become the fourth work in a cycle of studies carried out by the author to investigate the independence of the judiciary. It is devoted to the implementation of the principle of irremovability of judges as one of the declared guarantees of their independence. The paper analyzes the institutional and individual independence of courts and judges, concludes that it is individual independence of judges that plays the special role in ensuring the independence of the judiciary in general. Within the framework of the study, the reader’s attention is drawn to the components of the irremovability of judges: the period of granting the status of federal judges and the special procedure for suspending and terminating their powers. The author criticizes various age limits established by the legislator, upon which judges’ powers are terminated. Such a differentiated approach, in his opinion, conflicts with the general legal principle of equality and a sectoral principle of the unity of the status of judges. As a consequence, the leadership of the highest courts, given the possibility of reassigning them repeatedly, falls into a harmful dependence on the person entitled to nominate them for the positions of the President and Vice-Presidents of the relevant court. The author provides discouraging forecasts concerning the implementation of the constitutional amendment extending the powers of the President to deprive the status of judges of the Constitutional, Supreme Courts, Cassation and Appeal Courts of the Russian Federation. The work elaborates on the procedure for bringing judges to disciplinary responsibility, which is designed to protect their independence, but in view of the existing shortcomings allowing the use of this mechanism in order to monitor and pressure judges. In this regard, the author substantiates and proposes an impressive list of measures aimed at changing the situation. These measures include changing the composition of the qualification panels of judges, restricting the participation of judicial leadership and higher courts, their expansion by the judges of the Constitutional Court and the strengthening of their public participation, the establishment of the possibility of challenging the decisions of the qualification panels of judges by applicants.

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