Monday, June 17, 2019
Beck on The Supreme Court and Johnson v. United States
Brandon Beck (Texas Tech University School of Law) has posted The Orwell Court: How the Supreme Court Recast History and Minimized the Role of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines to Justify Limiting the Impact of Johnson v. United States (Buffalo Law Review Vol. 66, No. 5, December 2018) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
In recent years, federal criminal defendants have enjoyed great success in challenging “residual clauses” within the United States Code as unconstitutional. This began in 2015 when the United States Supreme Court, in Johnson v. United States, struck a portion of the Armed Career Criminal Act as void for vagueness. Johnson’s holding at first appeared monumental because it invalidated a provision commonly used to enhance the prison sentences of offenders with certain qualifying prior convictions. Subsequent developments, however, significantly dulled the impact of Johnson, thwarting the dramatic reduction in sentences it once foreshadowed.
This Article is about how Johnson came to be and the mechanisms through which the Supreme Court has subsequently weakened Johnson’s effect.
This Article is about how Johnson came to be and the mechanisms through which the Supreme Court has subsequently weakened Johnson’s effect.
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2019/06/beck-on-the-supreme-court-and-johnson-v-united-states.html