Welcome the the class blog of Sentencing Law @ Moritz College of Law (with first week details)

This blog got started over 10 years ago (with the uninspired title of Death Penalty Course @ Moritz College of Law) to facilitate student engagement in a Spring 2007 course on the death penalty.  Because the blog proved successful during that semester, and because the students' hard work as reflected in the archives still generates web traffic, I have kept repeatedly building subsequent sentencing classes on this platform by rebooting this blog for each new course.  

On the eve of 2018, I am excited again to be gearing up again to teach Sentencing Law at the Moritz College of Law and to be again planning to use this blog to flag current events and cases to supplement our class readings and discussions.  Because I use this blog (rather than TWEN) as convenient place to post information about class activities and plans and assignments, students can and should be on the look out for class materials and announcement posted here. So, for example, here is a repeating of what is posted on the Moritz official website for our first assignments (along with electronic copies of the basic course documents):

In preparation for our first week of classes starting Monday, January 8, 2018 you should:

1.  Get a copy of the THIRD edition of the casebook for the course, along with the course description/syllabus.

2.  Access the questionnaire and fill it out before our first class.  (In addition to being posted below, the questionnaire and course description/syllabus are available in hard-copy in front of my office, Room 313.)

3.  Find/research on your own a real sentencing issue, case or story that is of significant interest to you, and come to our first week of classes prepared to explain this issue, case or story and why it is of significant interest to you. 

Download 2018 Course description

Download 2018 Fall pre Class Survey 

 

You will discover that the last item in the questionnaire references recent clemency activity by recent presidents, and here are a few links with background:

Background on President Obama's Clemency Initiative

"Obama used clemency power more often than any president since Truman"

An Analysis of the Implementation of the 2014 Clemency Initiative

 

"Trump commutes sentence of kosher meatpacking executive"

"Trump Did a Good Thing: In praise of the president’s decision to commute Sholom Rubashkin’s sentence."

"Immigration hawks protest Trump giving Sholom Rubashkin first prison commutation"