Sentencing events at AALS meeting

Blogging may slow down later this week because I am off to San Francisco for the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Law School.  I hope to have internet access, but much of my time may be consumed by conference events.  Here is a quick run down of the sentencing events of note at AALS this week:

Thursday AM: The McGeorge School of Law's Capital Center for Government Law and Policy is hosting a breakfast meeting to discuss sentencing reforms issues and in particular this soon-to-be-published proposal for wholesale reform of California's sentencing practices.

Thursday lunch: At the lunch of the Criminal Justice Section, a number of criminal law professor bloggers (including the folks who bring us CrimProf Blog) will be talking about the blogging phenomenon.  I plan to highlight why I think blogging is especially important (and fun) in the field of sentencing.

Friday PM: A panel sponsored by the Criminal Justice section entitled "The Rehabilitation of Rehabilitation" will focus on "the recent turn in policy at the state level away from mandatory and long-term incarceration and toward alternative dispositions that are expressly or implicitly rehabilitative."  More details about this program can be found at this link.

Friday PM:  Professor Joe Kennedy has put together a "Hot Topics" panel to discuss Blakely and the other major criminal justice decisions of the past term entitled "Supreme Court Surprises on Guideline Sentencing, Enemy Combatants and the Confrontation Clause: Happenstance or a new assertiveness?".   More details about this program can be found by scrolling down at this link.

ADDITION: Prof. Stephanos Bibas has reminded me about another Blakely-related event Friday afternoon.  At the Pan Pacific Hotel Friday from 5:15pm to 7pm, a Federalist Society panel of with Profs. Bibas, Akhil Amar, Ron Allen, and Rick Garnett (moderator) will discuss "Will Originalism and Formalism Save Criminal Law or Will They Destroy It?"

Saturday AM: With the help of fellow sentencing fanatics, I will be conducting a relatively informal discussion about Blakely and the future of sentencing reform.  (The original hope was to do an official "Hot Topics" panel to talk about the decision in Booker and Fanfan; now I suspect we will spend time chatting about why we have not yet seen a decision in Booker and Fanfan.)

Saturday PM: A panel co-sponsored by the Criminal Justice section entitled "The Privatization of Criminal Justice" will focus on private prisons and other ways in which various traditional criminal justice functions have been privatized.  More details about this program can be found at this link.