Law Commons^™

Navigating Beyond The Lodestar: Borrowing The Federal Sentencing Guidelines To Provide Fee-Shifting Predictability, Matthew Ahn

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

The lodestar has been the dominant calculation method for fee-shifting awards for nearly 40 years. But the lodestar has numerous persistent issues: it leads to extra litigation and judicial effort, it results in highly variable fee awards, and it incentivizes plaintiffs’ attorneys to bill extravagantly and reject settlement. This Article argues that these issues with the lodestar, along with many others, result from a mismatch between the lodestar and the purpose of the underlying fee-shifting statutes, which is to encourage attorneys to bring suits that would not normally be economically viable. Encouraging attorneys to do so requires the fee awards …

Judges And Mass Incarceration, Carissa Byrne Hessick

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

It seems to have fallen out of fashion to talk about judges as a source of criminal justice reform. Instead, the academic literature now focuses on the role that prosecutors and legislatures have played in mass incarceration. But judges have also played an important role in the phenomenon that has come to be known as mass incarceration. Perhaps more importantly, there are things that judges could do to help reverse that trend.

Judges will sometimes say our system is too harsh. But, in the same breath they tell us the decision to create such a system and the decision to …

Problematic Ai — When Should We Use It?, Fredric Lederer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

No Child Left Behind Bars: Applying The Principles Of Strict Scrutiny When Sentencing Juveniles Tried As Adults, Max Chu

William & Mary Law Review

The Commonwealth of Virginia was the first in the nation to pass legislation that provides judges with the discretion to veer away from the mandatory minimum sentence and to impose trauma-informed and age-appropriate sentences for juvenile offenders convicted of felonies and tried as adults. Although Virginia’s new law, House Bill 744 (HB 744), is a pioneering step in the right direction, this Note argues that the law may now provide judges with too much discretion. In other words, HB 744 alone, without more guidance, does not go far enough to protect the rights of juvenile offenders.

Therefore, this Note proposes …

Old Age As The Hidden Sentencing Factor, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Imagine two doctors who illegally sold opioids in exchange for cash. Both doctors sold roughly the same quantity of pills, had no prior criminal convictions, and accordingly faced the same sentencing guidelines range. The major difference was that one doctor was in his sixties and considerably older than the other doctor. The Federal Sentencing Guidelines provide that judges should consider a defendant's age only in atypical cases. Yet, this Article demonstrates that older defendants received sentencing discounts far more often than younger defendants convicted of the same crime.

This Article gathers sentencing data for almost 130 doctors convicted in federal …