On first Monday in October, another round of previews for SCOTUS's starting sentencing case, Pulsifer v. US

After a rough weekend for US pro golfers and Ohio's pro football teams, I am glad that a new season officially kicks off today with the Supreme Court hearing its first oral arguments to start its October Term 2023.  Actually, the Term arguably got rolling Friday with cert grants in a dozen new cases (though only a couple involved criminal law issues), and also with this morning's lengthy new order list denying cert in hundreds of cases. 

But, for SCOTUS, the first oral argument on the first Monday in October is something like the throwing of the first pitch on baseball's opening day. (And, speaking of baseball, the MLB playoffs should keep October exciting even if SCOTUS does not.)  As I have noted recently, I am especially excited that SCOTUS's first case for argument is Pulsifer v. United States, a statutory interpretation case dealing with a sentencing provision of the FIRST STEP Act.  Stated in a pithy way, the issue in Pulsifer is whether the word "and" as used in the FIRST STEP Act's expansion of the mandatory minimum statutory safety valve actually means "and" or might instead mean "or."  

In this post last week, I noted a few preview pieces about the case, but now I have see a few more worth flagging:

From Lisa-Legalinfo, "SCOTUS Hears Argument Over Meaning Of “And” In First Step Act" 

From SCOTUSblog, "Mandatory minimums, payday lending, and voting rights in first session of Supreme Court term"

From Slate, "The Supreme Court’s First Case Is a Brutal Grammatical Test"

LawProf Aaron Tang authored the Slate commentary, and his closing sentiments seek to connect the (little?) Pulsifer case to the (big?) issues swirling around the Supreme Court at the start of a new Term (with links from original):

If the court wants to push back against the partisan trends in recent terms, it can heed the wise advice once offered by Judge Learned Hand, who remarked that “the spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.”

By humbly admitting uncertainty on the perplexing issue in Pulsifer, the court can apply a more promising approach to hard cases.  It can rule against whichever side would be best able to avoid the harm of a mistaken ruling — an approach I’ve called the “least harm principle” of judicial decision-making.

Indeed, criminal law already has a doctrine well suited to this principle. It is the “rule of lenity,” or the idea that where criminal statutes are susceptible to multiple reasonable interpretations, the court should adopt the defendant-friendly reading.

The best reason for this rule is that it is virtually always harder for criminal defendants to avoid the harm of mistakenly harsh criminal punishments than for the government to avoid the harm of lenient sentences.  Indeed, even if it loses this very case, the government would still have discretion to ask a trial judge to impose a harsher sentence on Pulsifer if it believes he is particularly dangerous.

In the end, the Pulsifer case will not be the most high-profile case the court decides this year.  But the case will provide important initial insights into how the justices are planning to respond to a disastrous summer for its public legitimacy — not to mention the costly mass incarceration crisis that is decimating our communities.  Here’s hoping it does so with a dose of humility.

A few prior related posts about SCOTUS Pulsifer case:

• SCOTUS grants certiorari to review reach of FIRST STEP Act's expansion of statutory safety valve 
• Top-side SCOTUS briefs in Pulsifer address FIRST STEP Act's expansion of statutory safety valve 
• Reviewing the big little and/or case, Pulsifer v. US, that will kick off the new Supreme Court Term