Previewing Tuesday’s ACCA cases in the Supreme Court

Tuesday morning the Supreme Court will hear argument in US v. Rodriquez (06-1646) and Begay v. US (06-11543), two cases exploring whether certain prior state offense should trigger the severe mandatory minimum sentencing terms Congress provided in the Armed Career Criminal Act (known as ACCA). 

As detailed in this prior post, I wrote up a formal preview of these two ACCA cases for the ABA.  In this preview, I noted that these cases, though technically raising pure issues of statutory interpretation, implicate a number of cross-cutting jurisprudential and policy considerations.  For another take on these cases, previews are also available from SCOTUSwiki on Rodriquez here and Begay here.