Noticing that two Justices keep noticing challenges to old (vague?) guidelines

Law360 has this lengthy new piece, headlined "In Dissent: Why 2 Justices Keep Spotlighting Career Offenders," which flags the notable sentencing-related work of a couple of Justices in orderl lists. Here are the essentials:

Close watchers of the U.S. Supreme Court may have noticed a recurring theme in orders issued over the past two years.

In at least 27 cases, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have gone out of their way to dissent from their colleagues’ rejection of petitions by “career offenders,” or people serving extra-long sentences due to prior violent crime or drug convictions.

The petitioners claim that the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which were mandatory at the time of their sentencing hearings, defined violent crimes by using an unconstitutionally vague phrase.  Their argument is supported by [the 2015 Johnson] high court ruling that invalidated the exact same phrase as it was used in a separate law.  The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and district courts in four other circuits have explicitly agreed with their reasoning, but six appellate courts have rejected it. Sotomayor highlighted that fact in an October 2018 dissent called Thilo Brown v. U.S. — the first time she and Ginsburg publicly scolded their colleagues for refusing to take up the split.

“This case presents an important question of federal law that has divided the courts of appeals and in theory could determine the liberty of over 1,000 people,” Sotomayor wrote, citing figures in an amicus brief supporting Brown. “That sounds like the kind of case we ought to hear.”...

Despite their efforts, the two justices have had no success in peeling off peers. With the court looking unlikely to resolve the circuit split, some career offenders in places like Wisconsin, Illinois and Texas are getting out years earlier than planned. Others, in places like California, Tennessee and Kansas, have no shot at relief beyond a presidential clemency or legislative reform....

Part of the reason for the other justices’ reluctance to take up the issue could be the fact that the alleged injustice is an “issue of diminishing importance,” according to Leah Litman, a University of Michigan law professor who co-signed briefs in related cases. “No one is still being sentenced under that provision,” Litman said. “It just concerns people being resentenced. Because it won’t arise in the future, it has less purchase on the court’s time.”