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Courts and Sentencing blog
Jury Duty Is the Rule of Law in Your Own Town, So Answer the Summons The jury is the one place ordinary citizens hold judicial power directly, and a summons is a privilege the Founders fought to secure. Twelve Strangers, How Trial by Jury Crossed the Atlantic to America Colonists named trial by jury again and again as a right. Its path from Magna Carta to Duncan v. Louisiana shows why the Constitution protects it three times. The Rule of Law Has Eight Marks, and Lawmakers Can Fail at Every One Lon Fuller listed eight ways a ruler can fail to make law at all. Each is explained with history, tied to the Constitution and tested on a code no one can read. Senior Status, the Rule of 80 and Other Questions About How Judges Retire Eleven plain answers on senior status, the Rule of 80 in 28 U.S.C. 371, how vacancies open and why a judge's timing shapes who sits on the bench next. How to Read a Federal Court Docket Without a Lawyer or a Big PACER Bill A step-by-step guide to finding a federal case, reading its docket sheet and keeping PACER costs near zero, so you can follow a lawsuit yourself. How to Research Your State's Judges Before You Vote in a Judicial Election Six steps for researching judicial candidates, from your state's selection system to opinions, bar ratings, campaign money and the ethics rules. The Rule of Law Is Older Than the Constitution, From Magna Carta to Marbury No one above the law is an eight-century English inheritance, and the Founders knew every chapter of it. Here is the road from Runnymede to Marbury. What to Do if You Are a Crime Victim, Your Rights Step by Step Crime victims hold legal rights most never hear about. Here are six concrete steps, from custody notification to restitution, to put them to work. Ramos v. Louisiana and the Jim Crow Roots of Split-Jury Convictions In 2020 the Court held that state criminal juries must be unanimous, ending a rule born in Louisiana's 1898 convention, and the originalist case is strong. Civil Asset Forfeiture Lets Government Keep Property Without a Conviction Government can take property tied to a crime without charging the owner, and property-rights and police-side conservatives weigh that power differently. Mandatory Minimums Divide Conservatives, and Both Sides Have a Point Mandatory minimums promise certainty and equal treatment but take judgment from judges, and the 1986 crack law shows both the logic and the cost. The Blue Slip Explained, a Senate Courtesy That Shapes Every Federal Bench The blue slip is a Judiciary Committee custom, not a law, that lets home-state senators stop nominees, and its force depends on who chairs. A Fisherman, Some Undersized Grouper and the Problem of Regulatory Crime A fisherman faced up to twenty years over fish thrown overboard, and the case shows how federal crime outran the statute book and the guilty mind. Cruel and Unusual Meant Something in 1791 Before Evolving Standards Arrived The Eighth Amendment copied the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and set a fixed standard, until the Court swapped it for evolving standards of decency. Speedy, Public, Impartial, Reading the Sixth Amendment's Promises One at a Time One sentence, seven protections for the accused, each written against a known abuse, from Raleigh's trial in 1603 to the Ramos jury ruling of 2020. The Fifth Amendment Holds Five Rights, Not Just the One From the Movies Grand jury, double jeopardy, self-incrimination, due process and just compensation each have their own history, and each guards you against a different abuse. Chuck Colson Went From Watergate to Prison to a Ministry Behind Bars Charles Colson served time for a Watergate-era crime, then spent his life arguing that prisoners are redeemable and responsible, and that both halves matter. How Earned Time Credits Work in Federal Prison, and Who Is Left Out The First Step Act of 2018 wrote its rules line by line: who earns time off, how much, who is shut out, and what the right's skeptics feared. What the Recidivism Numbers Really Say About Second Chances Nine years of federal data on released prisoners should sober reformers and hard-liners alike, and it points to a smarter way to run parole and reentry. Texas Chose Treatment Beds Over New Prisons in 2007, and Here Is Why Texas faced a forecast of thousands of new prison beds and bought treatment and diversion instead, a fiscal conservative choice worth understanding. Juvenile Courts Were Built for Truants, Not for Armed Teenagers The juvenile court was designed for wayward children, and states need a better answer for the few teenagers who commit adult violence. Elected, Appointed or the Missouri Plan, How the States Choose Their Judges Four systems for choosing state judges trade accountability against independence differently, and a self-governing people should know which one it lives under. State Supreme Courts Decide More of Your Life Than the Nine in Washington Contracts, property, crime, divorce and schools mostly live in state courts under state constitutions, so know your own state's high court. Black Codes, the freedmen and the Fourteenth Amendment's right to bear arms Southern states disarmed freed slaves in 1865, and Congress wrote the right to bear arms into the Freedmen's Bureau Act and the Fourteenth Amendment in answer. Universal Injunctions Barely Existed Before 1963, So Where Did They Come From One district judge blocking a law for the whole country is a modern invention, not a feature of the 1789 Judiciary Act, and both parties have used it. Should a Dealer Who Sells a Fatal Dose Be Charged With Homicide Drug-induced homicide laws treat a sale that kills as a killing, and conservatives disagree about whether that is justice or overreach. Bliss, Nunn and the antebellum judges who first read the right to bear arms Kentucky in 1822 and Georgia in 1846 held that a legislature may regulate carrying arms but not destroy the right. Heller and Bruen both lean on these cases. Should Immigration Courts Leave the Justice Department? Conservatives Disagree Immigration judges work for the Justice Department. Conservatives split on whether an independent Article I court would fix the system or weaken accountability. Campus Sex-Misconduct Hearings and the Due Process the 2011 Letter Removed Serious accusations deserve serious process for both sides. How the 2011 letter pushed colleges toward a system neither side could trust, and what fixed it. A Crime Victim Belongs in the Courtroom, Not Out in the Hallway The person a crime was done to deserves a voice at the plea and sentencing hearing, and the Supreme Court came around to that view in Payne v. Tennessee. The Victims' Rights Movement Began With a 1982 Presidential Task Force Modern victims' rights law grew from President Reagan's 1982 task force, which said the system had forgotten the people it serves. The history in order. Stand Your Ground Versus Duty to Retreat, Compared Rule by Rule States split on whether you must retreat before using deadly force in public. A rule-by-rule comparison shows why stand your ground has the better argument. The Seventh Amendment Guarantees a Civil Jury for Twenty Dollars and Means It The Seventh Amendment preserves the civil jury, and SEC v. Jarkesy (2024) showed it reaches agencies that try to impose penalties without one. How to Read Your District Attorney's Record Before You Vote Most voters pick a prosecutor by party label. A step-by-step guide to the policy memos, reports, court data and budgets that show what the office does. Prosecutorial Discretion Has Limits, and Blanket Non-Prosecution Crosses Them Choosing which cases to bring is ordinary discretion. Announcing that whole categories of law will go unenforced is a veto the office never had. John Adams Defended the British Soldiers Who Fired in the Boston Massacre In 1770 the patriot lawyer John Adams defended the soldiers whom Boston wanted hanged, and proved the cause of liberty was the rule of law. Three Ways to Decide Who Waits for Trial in Jail, Side by Side Money bail, algorithmic risk scores and judicial detention hearings each fail differently. A table compares them on safety, cost, due process and transparency. The Case Against Cashless Bail Starts With the Victim, Not the Defendant Bail laws that bar judges from weighing danger get detention backwards. Here is the argument, the best reform case, and a better answer in detention hearings. The Duke Lacrosse Case and the Rush to a Verdict the Facts Never Supported In 2006 a false accusation was treated as proven until North Carolina's attorney general declared three athletes innocent in 2007. The due-process lesson. Habeas Corpus Is the Oldest Liberty in the Constitution, and War Tests It The writ of habeas corpus came from England into the original Constitution. Every major American war has tested who may suspend it and when. Excessive Bail Shall Not Be Required, and What the Founders Meant by It The Eighth Amendment bars excessive bail, and the Founders paired bail with a power to hold the dangerous. Read the clause, the history and the cases. Article I, Section 9 Lists the Things Congress May Never Do to You Before the Bill of Rights, the original Constitution already carried a list of things Congress may never do. Here is every clause of Section 9, read in order. Blackstone's Three Absolute Rights and Why Every Founder Owned His Book Blackstone taught colonial lawyers that security, liberty and property are absolute rights, and that ten guilty should escape before one innocent suffers.