THE POLITICS OF INTIMIDATION

Attorney General John Ashcroft has asked his prosecutors to report to him
any federal judges who on their own -- in other words, not as part of a
plea bargain -- impose sentences that are more lenient than the federal
sentencing guidelines. Not coincidentally a group of House Republicans
allied with the very conservative and very activist majority leader, Tom
DeLay, have formed the Working Group on Judicial Accountability to monitor
and expose federal judges they suspect of being too lenient.

It would be naive to regard these actions as a simple gathering of facts.
Dispensing with such niceties as the separation of powers, Ashcroft and his
like-minded friends in the House would like to intimidate federal judges
into imposing the sentences they think should be imposed.

The founders gave us an independent judiciary to withstand just this sort
of attempted meddling by the executive and the legislative branches, but
the House has indicated a disturbing willingness to go beyond browbeating.

The federal sentencing guidelines are intended to bring uniformity to the
punishment of crimes by laying down a range of sentences. The judges might
depart from the guidelines, but for many crimes, particularly drugs, they
are limited by mandatory minimum sentences.

As Chief Justice William Rehnquist has pointed out, Congress rushes to
enact mandatory minimums to show it is "tough on crime'' without regard for
the judicial consequences let alone any standards of fairness in
sentencing. Many believe the guidelines themselves are too harsh and 15
years overdue for revision.

In politics, for every action there is always an opposite, if not always
equal, reaction, and the American Bar Association will now look at whether
mandatory minimum prison terms should be abolished altogether and whether
federal sentencing guidelines should be relaxed. Good for them.