Judge Cassell proves his brilliance, who’s next?

I now have to go off line for most of the afternoon to travel to do my faculty workshop at the UNC School of Law, but I have had a chance to skim Judge Cassell’s Wilson opinion (here) and have to quickly comment that it is absolutely brilliant (even in those spots when I think it is wrong).  No offense to the wise Nine in DC, but Judge Cassell has advanced the federal sentencing world far more in a day than SCOTUS could manage in sixth months.  (Is it too early to throw Judge Cassell’s name into the CJ Rehnquist replacement sweepstakes?)

I will have lots of commentary on Judge Cassell’s work late tonight and throughout the weekend.  But for now I must just stress that, as he did after Blakely through Croxford, Judge Cassell in Wilson has framed and defined the issues for debate in the wake of Booker.  And I am certain his views on these issues in Wilson, just as his views in Croxford, will not be universally embraced.  Indeed, I am so excited not only to have a chance to read Wilson closely, but to see what Judges Bataillon and Gertner and Goodwin and Holmes and Lynch and Weinstein and all the other fine folks having to work this through on the ground have to say in response.  The new federal sentencing world will be built opinion by opinion, and I suspect the new world will both be beautiful and grotesque (at least to my tired eyes).