Course Section | Columbia Law School

Section Description Provided by Instructor

This seminar will explore sentencing law and procedure with particular
attention to the federal system. After a general consideration of the
purposes of sentencing and of the rationales for determinate and
indeterminate sentencing regimes, we will use recent developments in
federal sentencing law as a vehicle for looking at how sentencing
authority can be allocated among the legislative, judicial and legislative
branches, and how sentencing regimes interact with plea bargaining
dynamics. Preference will be given to students who have taken Criminal
Adjudication Students will write three reaction papers (2 pages max) during the course of the semester, and a 15-20 page paper on a topic to be selected with the instructors' approval.