WASHINGTON, DC – Following oral argument at the Supreme Court this morning in Rutherford v. United States and Carter v. United States, consolidated cases in which the Court is considering the scope of a sentencing judge’s discretion to grant compassionate release under the Sentencing Reform Act, Constitutional Accountability Center Senior Appellate Counsel Smita Ghosh issued the following reaction:

Drawing on a centuries-long tradition of granting wide discretion to judges when imposing sentences, the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 allows federal judges to reduce a previously imposed sentence when they conclude that there are “extraordinary and compelling reasons” to do so. Petitioners Rutherford and Carter moved for reductions in their sentences under the Sentencing Reform Act in part because of significant differences between the sentences they are serving and the sentences that they would have received if they were sentenced for the same offenses today.

As CAC’s brief in this case explained, Congress used the phrase “extraordinary and compelling,” and deliberately included few limits on the factors that could be considered, to give judges broad discretion to determine whether a sentence should be reduced. Justice Jackson echoed this point when she explained that the Justices “all seem to agree” that district courts should not be restricted in their analysis of whether “extraordinary and compelling reasons” exist for a reduction.

This all but decides the case. There’s simply no reason to prohibit courts from considering the decades-long disparity between the sentences imposed on Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Carter and those of individuals who commit similar crimes today.

History supports this reading of the text. When drafting this part of the Sentencing Reform Act, Congress drew on the authority that judges and parole boards exercised under sentencing-review provisions that existed before the Sentencing Reform Act. And when exercising that authority, decision-makers often responded to changes in how society perceived an offense over time—the types of changes that would have produced disparities between current and previously imposed sentences.

If the Supreme Court takes this history seriously, it will rule for Mr. Rutherford and Mr. Carter and ensure that district court judges are able to exercise the discretion that Congress gave them.