Congratulations to new addition to Third Circuit, Judge (and sentencing scholar) Stephanos Bibas

As first noted in this post five months ago, Prez Donald Trump nominated a prominent sentencing scholar, Professor Stephanos Bibas, for a judgeship on the US Court of Appeal Third Circuit. As I said back then, I have a particular affinity for Prof Bibas not only because of his long history as a sentencing scholar, but also because we worked together on a Supreme Court case Tapia in which he was an appointed amicus and because we have co-authored articles such as Making Sentencing Sensible and Engaging Capital Emotions.  (Also, Prof Bibas did a stint of guest-blogging in this space in conjunction with the release of his book, "The Machinery of Criminal Justice," which was published in 2012 by Oxford University Press; his posts are linked under the category tab, Guest blogging by Professor Stephanos Bibas.)

Given this background, nobody should be surprised that I am extremely excited by this news from DC that today the "Senate voted to confirm Stephanos Bibas to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals."  I am confident that Judge Bibas will be a spectacular jurist, and I am especially eager to see how he handles the many federal sentencing appeals that are a regular part of the docket of every US Court of Appeals.