Amazing Stanford Law Review issue on "More Perfect" sentencing reforms

I thought it would be hard for any law journal to rival the work done by the Columbia Law Review in its amazing May issue, which published papers from its recent symposium "Sentencing: What's at Stake for the States?".   But, thanks to the just-produced October issue of the Stanford Law Review, I am no longer sure who will win the award for the "Best 2005 Law Journal Issue on Sentencing" (which, I believe, is a new category at the ESPYs).

The October issue of the Stanford Law Review, which includes my recent offense/offender article, was a special project conceived by Professors Robert Weisberg and Marc Miller in the wake of last year's fantastic symposium at Stanford Law School entitled "The Future of American Sentencing: A National Roundtable on Blakely."  (Background on the Stanford event can be found here and here, and highlights here.)  I have receive a copy of the table of contents for the issue, which is available for download below, and here is a partial account of the issue and its goals drawn from a letter to the press from the Stanford folks producing the issue:

This Issue focuses on the future of federal sentencing law and synthesizes the wisdom of the nation's leading experts in the field, who acted with remarkable speed in addressing the most practical and urgent concerns about federal sentencing now confronting the Judiciary, as well as Congress and the Executive.  Because these experts provided such valuable insight, the Stanford Law Review decided to distribute the Issue in an unprecedented manner to all members of Congress and all federal district and appellate court judges, as well as federal and state sentencing commissions.  This Issue, in sum, is a rare contribution from the scholarly world — the publication of which is also a very significant public event....

In producing this Issue, our goal has been to provide an overview of the current state of American sentencing and to present a variety of perspectives on the issues that Congress will likely have to consider in order to reshape the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. We share it to assist in your own coverage of the political and legal dramas about to unfold, and we hope you will see the distribution of this special Issue as itself a major stage in this civic process.

Download stanford_law_review_toc_issue_1_volume_58.pdf