Mistretta v. United States - Significance, The Sentencing Reform Act Comes Under Challenge, "an Unusual Hybrid", Dissent: "a Sort Of Junior-varsity Congress"

petitioner john decision justices

Petitioner

John Mistretta

Respondent

United States

Petitioner's Claim

That the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 violated the constitutional separation-of-powers doctrine by establishing a Sentencing Commission of judges with "excessive legislative powers."

Chief Lawyer for Petitioner

Alan B. Morrison

Chief Lawyer for Respondent

Charles Fried, U.S. Solicitor General

Justices for the Court

Harry A. Blackmun (writing for the Court), William J. Brennan, Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens, Byron R. White

Justices Dissenting

Antonin Scalia

Place

Washington, D.C.

Date of Decision

18 January 1989

Decision

The Constitution does not prevent Congress from appointing a body of experts within the judicial branch to develop guidelines for matters unique to their area of knowledge, making the Sentencing Reform Act valid.

Sources

Bacon, Donald C., et al., eds. The Encyclopedia of the United States Congress New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

Additional Topics

Mistretta v. United States - The Sentencing Reform Act Comes Under Challenge

"For almost a century," Justice Blackmun wrote for the Supreme Court in Mistretta v. United States, "the Federal Government employed in criminal cases a system of indeterminate sentencing." There were statutes addressing specific crimes, of course, but judges had considerable latitude in establishing sentences. Hand in hand with this system of indeterminate sentencing went another system: that of …

Mistretta v. United States - "an Unusual Hybrid"

By an 8-1 vote, the Court upheld the Sentencing Guidelines. Congress had neither delegated "excessive legislative power" to the commission, nor had it violated the separation-of-powers principle by establishing the commission within the judicial branch, by requiring federal judges to serve on the commission and share authority with non-judges, or by giving the president power to appoint and remove…

Mistretta v. United States - Dissent: "a Sort Of Junior-varsity Congress"

Justice Scalia dissented, writing, "because I can find no place within our constitutional system for an agency created by Congress to exercise no governmental power other than the making of laws." The problem with the commission, he held, was precisely its lack of judicial or executive powers. He was concerned that responsibility for making laws could be delegated to "experts" in a given field-- p…

Mistretta v. United States - Checks And Balances

The Constitution provides for the separation of powers and a system of checks and balances to prevent the rise of a single branch of government over the other two. Each branch--executive, legislative, and judicial--acts as a check on and balances the power of the other two. The powers of the branches are mixed in such a way that no one branch is completely separable from the others. The framers of…

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