Notice Anything Different About the Blog?

With the Marquette Law Faculty Blog about to celebrate its fourth anniversary, we thought it was time for a makeover.  Do you notice any of the changes?  The banner now includes three images from our wonderful new home, Eckstein Hall, in addition to the old image of the stained glass in Sensenbrenner Hall.  All of the old links and pages are still here, but reorganized in new ways that will prove (we hope) more helpful to readers and that will better highlight dynamic aspects of the Blog.  There are also a couple of new features in the navigation bar.  “Scholarly Resources” will take you to the Marquette Law Scholarly Commons, a terrific new repository of law review articles and other resources that was launched earlier this month.  (Read the announcement here.)  “Legal Resources” will take you to a list of useful links to free on-line resources, including court websites and Wisconsin statutory and administrative law.

Thanks to Ed Fallone and Melissa Greipp, who spearheaded the redesign; to Dax Phillips, who managed the technical side of things; and to Patricia Cervenka and the Law Librarians for their suggestions for the Legal Resources page.

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California Answers Some of the Graham/Miller Questions, Sort Of

As I discussed in a recent post, the United States Supreme Court left many questions unanswered in its two recent decisions on life without parole for juveniles.  In the first case, Graham v. Florida (2010), the Court banned LWOP for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses.  Then, in Miller v. Alabama (2012), the Court banned mandatory LWOP even for juveniles convicted of homicide.  These were important Eighth Amendment decisions, but the lower courts have been left to implement them without much guidance.

Yesterday, the California Supreme Court began to address some of the unanswered questions in People v. Caballero.  I think Caballero got things right, as far as it went, but the case left much open for future litigation. 

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Ice Gets Iced

Earlier this summer, in Southern Union Co. v. United States (No. 11-94), the Supreme Court seemed to reverse course yet again in its on-and-off revolution in the area of jury-trial rights at sentencing.  The revolution began with Apprendi v. New Jersey (2000), which held that a jury, and not a judge, must find the facts that increase a statutory maximum prison term.  The revolution seemed over two years later, when the Court decided in Harris v. United States that no jury was required for mandatory minimum sentences.  But, another two years after that, in Blakely v. Washington, the revolution was back on, with the Court extending Apprendi rights to sentencing guidelines.  Blakelywas especially notable for its hard-nosed formalism: Apprendi was said to have created a bright-line rule firmly grounded in the framers’ reverence for the jury; we are not in the business, declared Justice Scalia for the Blakely majority, of carving out exceptions to such clear rules in the interest of efficiency or other contemporary policy concerns.

Then came Oregon v. Ice in 2009, which seemed to signal that the Court had again grown weary of the revolution.  

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