A Model for Interpreting Federal Sentencing Law

Abstract

Commentators have long complained that federal courts do not engage in consistent methods of statutory interpretation. Perhaps nowhere would consistency be more beneficial than with federal sentencing law. This paper argues that federal judges have amplified discretion and disparity--two issues the Sentencing Reform Act (SRA) sought to curb--through interpretive fiat. As judges interpret federal sentencing statutes, the SRA, and the Sentencing Guidelines, judicial discretion grows as malleable canons and theories of statutory interpretation are applied without consistency or without a reasoned framework. The result favors circuit splits, which lead to disparity among standards applied to defendants across jurisdictions. As a remedy, this paper proposes a clear model for interpreting federal sentencing law that advances its guiding principles. These principles are synthesized by reviewing the history of the SRA and coalescing the recent development of federal sentencing law into values informed by H.L.A. Hart's theory of punishment, which can both clarify the proper tools of statutory interpretation and guide a court when faced with textual ambiguity. Ultimately, and after reviewing case studies concerning current sentencing ambiguity, this paper proposes textually-constrained purposivism as the appropriate theory for interpreting federal sentencing law.

Keywords: Criminal Law, Sentencing, Statutory Interpretation