United States v. Booker

This is enormous news. The Supreme Court has held that the federal Sentencing Guidelines are unconstitutional. I'll hopefully be able to write more about this today or tomorrow, but it is really really big, and has the potential to require literally hundreds of thousands of sentences to be either revisited or drastically reduced, particularly for inmates sentenced to long-terms for drug trafficking based on a judge's finding of "relevant conduct," i.e., that the defendant trafficked in many more grams and kilograms of crack cocaine than the jury had actually found or even heard about.

One interesting note for Supreme Court watchers: the majority consisted of three of the "liberals" on the Court, Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg, joined by Justices Scalia and Thomas. Worth considering when you think about future nominations... the Court doesn't always vote the way you think they will.