Feeney Sentencing Amendment Update
Law Professor and blogger Jeff Cooper has these thoughts today on the Feeney Sentencing Amendment .
The notion that the Feeney Amendment represents a power grab by the Justice Department is supported not only by the substance of the amendment itself, but also by the procedure through which it was adopted. The amendment was appended to the Amber Alert Bill while that bill was in conference committee; it went through none of the ordinary process of hearings and committee deliberation. Input from judges and the members of the Sentencing Commission was not sought; Justice, on the other hand, had its fingerprints all over the proposal. Since September 11, the Justice Department has taken numerous steps to expand and consolidate its power. In the Patriot Act, in the Jose Padilla case, in numerous other instances the Department has taken steps to limit or eliminate judicial oversight of its actions. The Feeney Amendment is part and parcel of this enterprise. It's too much to hope for a presidential veto--the Amber Alert Bill is popular, and the president is unlikely to object to an amendment to that bill sought by his own Justice Department. But Congress should revisit the issue in the near future--and it should do so in a more deliberative, orderly fashion.
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