The Future of American Sentencing: A National Roundtable on Blakely"

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court opened its fall term with expedited hearings on two cases that would resolve the status of federal sentencing guidelines, which were cast into doubt by a landmark Court decision last June, Blakely v. Washington.

Although this week's hearings are intended to clarify the effect of the Blakely ruling on federal guidelines, many criminal justice experts believe questions are likely to remain once litigation plays out in the federal courts. And, it's unclear what effect the ruling from these most recent cases will have on some state sentencing schemes that have also been called into question by the Blakely ruling.

Stanford Law School will host the nation's leading sentencing law and policy experts to discuss the ripple effect that the Blakely ruling will continue to have on the criminal justice system at a conference titled, “The Future of American Sentencing: A National Roundtable on Blakely.”

The conference's opening panel will feature the two principal attorneys in the Blakely case, Jeffrey Fisher, counsel for defendant, and Michael Dreeben, a U.S. deputy solicitor general, who has represented the government in the Blakely and post-Blakely litigation.

The conference will also help start the planning of a new Stanford Law School Center for Criminal Justice, under the direction of Robert Weisberg, Edwin E. Huddleson, Jr. Professor of Law. The center will aim to integrate research, public events, and clinical education in the field of criminal law.

In Blakely, the Court called into question the 17-year old federal sentencing guidelines established by Congress, when it struck as unconstitutional, a similar sentencing system used by the state of Washington. In its opinion, the Court issued a dramatic new reading of the Sixth Amendment right to jury trial, saying the state of Washington cannot send a person to serve a greater prison sentence than what was permissible for the offense the jury found. The federal guidelines currently permit judges to add years to a sentence without jury involvement, as do some other state sentencing systems.

While the Justice Department has asked the Court to grant expedited hearings in this week's cases—United States v. Booker, and United States v. Fanfan—to clarify the effect of Blakely on federal sentencing, Blakely will likely keep some judges guessing as they try to discern the ultimate legal meaning for sentences handed down in their courtroom, and it's unclear what short- and long-term fixes Congress will devise for this constitutional problem with unclear boundaries.

The conference will address a range of post-Blakely issues, such as:

-Whether the Court has offered a coherent rationale for the relationship between the Sixth Amendment and sentencing.

- What types of judicial, legislative, and administrative remedies will satisfy Blakely.

-Whether Blakely might ultimately prove a boon to the widespread national movement for sentencing reform that has evolved in the wake of, and in tension with, the advent of modern sentencing guidelines.