Law Commons^™

The History Of The Original United States Sentencing Commission, 1985-1987, Brent E. Newton, Dawinder S. Sidhu

Hofstra Law Review

An eighteen-month period from the fall of 1985 to the spring of 1987 witnessed the most significant change to the federal criminal justice system in American history. In those eighteen months, the United States Sentencing Commission, a new and novel independent agency in the federal judicial branch, developed sentencing guidelines for all federal judges during the same period when Congress was enacting new mandatory minimum statutory penalties that dramatically increased existing penalties for drug trafficking and firearms offenses. This Article describes this founding era of structured federal sentencing, beginning with the Commission’s first meeting and ending with the transmittal of …