Managed Care and Managed Sentencing — A Tale of Two Systems

The daily injustices mount. The front line professionals who administer the system cry out for more discretion to depart from the rigid rules that bind them, Congress finally hears their call, and is poised to enact sweeping reforms. Are improvements in federal sentencing law on the way? Probably not in the near future. But the new Congress will surely take up proposals to regulate the managed health care industry, and the impending debate over a proposed Patients\u27 Bill of Rights law offers important lessons for federal sentencing policy. At first blush, sentencing reform and health care reform have about as much to do with each other as Justice Breyer and Dr. Spock. But take a closer look and some interesting if imperfect parallels become apparent

Innocence Protection Act: Death Penalty Reform on the Horizon

The criminal justice pendulum may be swinging back in the direction of fairness. The Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives earlier this year, promises meaningful reforms in the administration of capital punishment in the United States. Unlike previous slabs at reform, the Innocence Protection Act (lPA) has a real chance to become law because it commands unusually broad bipartisan support. The Senate bill (S. 486) is sponsored by Democrat Pat Leahy of Vermont and Republican Gordon Smith of Oregon. The House bill (H.R. 912) is sponsored by Democrat Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts and Republican Ray LaHood of Illinois. As of March, the bill was co-sponsored by 15 Senators, 4 of them Republicans. and by an astounding 175 House members, 20 of them Republicans. Never before in recent history have so many members of Congress from both parties gone on record in support of strengthening procedural protections for capital defendants. Nor is this just a round-up of the usual suspects. Both Leahy and Delahunt are former prosecutors, and the list of co-sponsors includes such relatively conservative members as Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, Congressman Joe Scarborough of Florida and Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey. Can Senate and House Judiciary Committee Chairnen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) be far behind? This article describes how we arrived at this surprising political moment, summarizes the IPA, and analyzes the prospects for its enactment

The Innocence Protection Act of 2004: A Small Step Forward and a Framework for Larger Reforms

Passage of the Innocence Protection Act in the closing days of the 108th Congress was a watershed moment. To be sure, the bill that finally became law was a shadow of the more ambitious criminal justice reforms first championed five years earlier by Senator Pat Leahy, Congressman Bill Delahunt and others. But the enactment of legislation designed to strengthen — not weaken — procedural protections for death row inmates was rich in symbolic importance and promise. Writing in the April 2001 issue of THE CHAMPION (Innocence Protection Act: Death Penalty Reform on the Horizon), I said optimistically: The criminal justice pendulum may be swinging back in the direction of fairness. The Innocence Protection Act of 2001, introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives earlier this year, promises meaningful reforms in the administration of capital punishment in the United States. Four years later I\u27d claim that prediction was fairly accurate. While the reforms in the final bill are not as meaningful as I and others had hoped, the pendulum clearly swung. (Title IV of Public Law 108-405, Justice for All Act.) The IPA marks a dramatic departure from 25 years of congressional debate on the death penalty. Soon after the Supreme Court revived capital punishment in 1976, proposals emerged to restore the federal death penalty. In 1986, the Reagan Administration unsuccessfully urged the U.S. Sentencing Commission to promulgate guidelines for federal capital punishment. In 1988, as part of an omnibus anti-drug bill, Congress reauthorized the federal death penalty for certain drug-related murders. The 1994 crime bill signed by President Clinton authorized a death sentence for over 50 new and existing federal crimes

Dan Freed: My Teacher, My Colleague, My Friend

At a recent meeting of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions, Yale professor Dan Freed was honored during a panel discussion titled Standing on the Shoulders of Sentencing Giants, Dan Freed is indeed a sentencing giant. but he is the gentlest giant of all. It is hard to imagine that a man as mild-mannered, soft-spoken, and self-effacing as Dan Freed has had such a profound impact on federal sentencing law and so many other areas of criminal justice policy, Yet he has. I\u27ve been in many rooms with Dan Freed over the years — classrooms, boardrooms, dining rooms, and others. Dan is usually a light and gentle participant, even in discussions he is leading. Yet time and again, he silences the gathering with his rare ability to synthesize arguments, convey important thoughts persuasively, and, above all, ask the right questions

Student Demands: How Should Law Schools and Their Deans Respond?

Law students are sometimes caricatured as money-hungry careerists, merely punching their ticket to an outsized law firm salary. Those of us in legal education know that stereotype is entirely invalid. In fact, most students come to law school because they want to make the world a better place. The death of George Floyd in police custody on a Minneapolis street corner in May 2020 shocked the conscience of the nation. Unsurprisingly, many law students were moved to action and inspired to put their nascent legal skills to work in support of racial justice. Much of their advocacy focused on campaigns for policing reforms at the federal, state and local levels. But some students used the occasion to challenge the law schools they attend (and to which they pay tuition) to live up to the values of diversity, equity and inclusion. At a number of law schools, including mine, that energy was channeled into the development of a set of “demands” posed by students to their schools. In this essay I will recount the experience at the University of Baltimore School of Law, where I serve as dean, and offer my thoughts on steps law school administrators can take and pitfalls they should avoid in response to this form of student activism

Exploring Federal Diversity Jurisdiction: Testimony in Front of the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice

Good morning Chairman Franks, Ranking Member Cohen and members of the Subcommittee. My name is Ronald Weich and I am the dean of the University of Baltimore School of Law. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this hearing entitled “Exploring Federal Diversity Jurisdiction.” The subject of today’s hearing is technical, complex, little-understood by the general public, and yet fundamental to the administration of justice in this country. Federal diversity jurisdiction touches on profound questions of federalism, state sovereignty and the proper functioning of the federal courts

Interpretation: Article I, Section 5

In Article I of the Constitution, the Framers vest the legislative authority of the United States government in a bicameral Congress, and over the ten sections of the Article they systematically flesh out the structure, duties, and powers of that Congress. In the early sections of Article I they describe the membership of each House, giving life to the “Great Compromise” of the Constitutional Convention under which each state has equal representation in the Senate but population-based representation in the House of Representatives. In Section 5, they grant Congress the power to govern itself. Section 5 consists of four separate clauses, each of which addresses different practical aspects of legislative procedure