benefit as congress has recognized to ensure that people who come out stop committing crimes. and so what i convey, or did, when i was a trial judge, as i sentenced people to very lengthy periods of incarceration was, you are getting your day in court, you are able to say what you want to say, but you have to sit here and listen to my reading into the record the victims statements in this case. you have to go away understanding that i am imposing consequences for your decision, your decision to engage in criminal behavior. and the reason why i did that, i have said, is because i recognized as a defender that there were lots of people in our system who instead of taking responsibility for what they had
but when you ve got a partisan organization here that s putting a pipeline of people in there that they think think like them and have a judicial philosophy like them, how can any reasonable person think that this is just kind of fixing the mechanics. it s a partisan decision that even some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have taken the bait. so much so that they would reverse a commitment that they made with me when they signed that letter to say that they would never nuke filibuster and then nuke it. president biden is on that list, too. back in 1983, gave a rousing speech in a judiciary committee hearing, saying, don t pack the court. he gave a rousing speech on the senate floor, saying, don t nuke the filibuster. but now we re in this posture to where we could destroy two institutions, if we re not careful. so i actually hope that you can, at some point, study the issue
so it s not just a look at whether or not it s wrong, zpst important that the court take into account all of those factors, because stare decisis, meaning, letting the precedent stand, is a very important pillar of the rule of law. when is it appropriate for a judge to impose a sentence enhancement under the guidelines? thank you, senator. the federal sentencing guidelines are crafted to assist courts in making sentencing determinations within the broad range that congress prescribes for cases. for crimes. so in the typical case, a defendant is convicted of some crime, in the federal system,
massachusetts was ultimately struck down unanimously by the supreme court. is that correct? thank you, senator. the brief oh, by the way, i didn t expect you to respond to my rife on packing the court. just to net it out, it s a bad, bad, bad, idea. i understand. the brief that you are referencing was a brief that i worked on right after finishing my supreme court clerkship when i joined a big law firm in massachusetts. this is 19 maybe 2000, at the end of my clerkship. and it is a first amendment free speech set of arguments that the lawyers at my firm i was a part of a team, representing clients who wanted to make an argument about buffer zones, which at that time, had not yet been litigated all the way up to the supreme court.
supreme court. i think that it was federalist papers 78, where hamilton talked about the vulnerability, or i think, the feebleness. now, he was arguing, i think the case for lifetime appointments. but i do think that the supreme court is a fragile institution. and i do believe that if we think it s politicized now, think about how it would be if we destroy the institution of the senate, so that a strict party line partisan vote, we expand the court. that s why court packing is important. and that s why we ask a question that i know you re not going to answer, but i know that justice breyer and justice ginsburg did. and if there s any supreme court justice listening right now, i wish that they would speak up. because i think your institution is in peril and accelerating it to a truly political body is only one successful nuking of