Law 795: Federal Sentencing Seminar

Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse
219 South Dearborn Street, Courtroom 2214
Chicago, IL 60604

The federal sentencing landscape has been radically altered in recent years following a series of Supreme Court decisions that have returned discretion to the courts.  Gone are the days of mandatory sentencing guidelines that severely limited the range of outcomes available to the sentencing judge.  Instead, the court can now take a wide variety of factors into consideration-- in mitigation or aggravation-- as it imposes sentence.  

This seminar will touch briefly on the evolution of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and the recent Supreme Court decisions mentioned above before moving on to unsettled issues and questions that are currently the subject of debate and litigation.  Topics are likely to include:  the disparity between sentences imposed for crack and powder cocaine offenses; mandatory-minimum statutes and the power they place in the hands of prosecutors, who have discretionary authority to charge a case in a way that guarantees a comparatively severe outcome; the recent, well-publicized white collar sentences imposed for financial fraud; the ongoing debate over child pornography sentences; alternatives to custodial sentences; and, the continued role of the now-advisory Federal Sentencing Guidelines at sentencing hearings.  

This course is not designed to include heavy reading and lectures.  Instead, we will be engaged in group discussion of actual sentencing filings, court orders, popular press coverage of sentencing issues, and the odd Supreme Court and lower court decision.  While the class is taught by a staff attorney from the Federal Defender Program, students will have an opporunity to hear from an Assistant United States Attorney and possibly a federal district court judge.  There will not be a traditional exam or a lengthy paper.  Instead, students will be evaluated on the basis of their answers to short-answer questions derived from class discussion and their participation.