JUSTICE PENDULUM SWINGS

No one really should be surprised by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision
declaring mandatory federal sentencing guidelines unconstitutional.
Last June, the court did precisely the same thing to state guidelines.

Now, by a 5-4 vote, the justices have ruled that federal guidelines --
enacted by Congress two decades ago -- should remain in effect, but
should be strictly advisory.

Only a jury, they said, can impose a mandatory sentence.

This means that individual judges once again will be granted the
discretion to dole out more lenient sentences to criminals who would
have faced harsher penalties under the mandatory guidelines.

Overly lenient judges, of course, are a plague that prompted Congress
to pass the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act in the first place.

To be sure, this week's decision is hardly ideological -- the court's
two most conservative justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas,
voted to find the guidelines unconstitutional.

Fortunately, the court also refused to make its ruling retroactive in
cases that have been resolved -- eliminating the specter of a mass
release of criminals from prison.

But it's worth recalling the atmosphere under which the guidelines
first were imposed.

Crime -- and particularly violent crime -- was running rampant, at
historically high levels. Ordinary citizens were disgusted by judges
who, ignoring common sense, routinely imposed sentences that clearly
ignored the seriousness of the crime.

Meanwhile, judges in different jurisdictions were handing down wildly
divergent sentences for the same crimes -- leaving the system
vulnerable to charges of unequal application of the law.

Congress tried to restore some order -- and sensibility -- to the
system. And, by most measures, it succeeded.

Certainly, stiffer sentences have played a key role in forcing crime
down to the lowest levels in more than four decades.

Congressional Republicans, anticipating this decision, already have
begun addressing the issue, seeking a new set of mandatory-sentencing
guidelines that will survive a constitutional challenge.

We hope they succeed.

Because the first ominous sign of a possible return to high-crime
times best left in the past is when the judicial pendulum begins
swinging back towards overzealous protection of criminals' rights --
at the expense of society's.

And of simple justice.