Judges | Open Access Articles | Digital Commons Network™

The Managerial Judge Goes To Trial, Elizabeth G. Thornbug

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines: A Misplaced Trust In Mechanical Justice, Evangeline A. Zimmerman

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In 1984 the Sentencing Reform Act was passed, ending fully discretionary sentencing by judges and allowing for the creation of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines ("FSG" or "Guidelines"). This Note proposes that the Guidelines failed not only because they ran afoul of the Sixth Amendment, as determined by the Supreme Court in 2005, but also because they lacked a clear underlying purpose, had a misplaced trust in uniformity, and were born of political compromise. Moreover, the effect of the FSG was to blindly shunt discretionary decisions from judges, who are supposed to be neutral parties, to prosecutors, who are necessarily partisan. …

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Judging Discretion: Contexts For Understanding The Role Of Judgment, Sarah M. R. Cravens

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This article approaches from a new angle the problem of understanding the meaning and scope of discretion in the judicial role and how an appellate court can or should judge the use or abuse of a lower court’s freedom of judgment. This article considers the meaning and practical application of the appellate standard of review of “abuse of discretion” across three different areas of law: federal sentencing, injunctive relief, and civil case management. The purpose behind this approach is to attempt to find commonalities that can be drawn across subject matter lines on a topic that is currently rife with …