Opinion ID: 181368
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Turnley's separation-of-powers arguments

Text: Turnley raises new arguments on appeal concerning the scope of the Commission's authority that are closely related to the two separation-of-powers issues raised by Justice Stevens in his Dillon dissent. He first contends that the Commission does not have the statutory authority in any instance . . . to issue a binding decree that would dictate to the sentencing court how it must exercise its resentencing discretion. In the alternative, Turnley argues that even if Congress did authorize the Commission to make the amended Guidelines range mandatory in § 3582(c)(2) resentencings, the Commission can enact such a measure only if it follows the notice-and-comment procedure that is set forth in the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 553, and that is partly incorporated into the Commission's statutory grant of authority found in 28 U.S.C. § 994(x). Turnley supports his position by pointing out that the majority opinion in Dillon expressly declined to address the separation-of-powers arguments raised in Justice Stevens's dissenting opinion. See Dillon, 130 S.Ct. at 2701-02 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (arguing that Congress did not authorize the Commission by its own fiat, to limit the effect of our decision in Booker,  and that § 1B1.10(b)(2)(A) was not subject to the detailed prescriptions on the Commission's power [that] we considered in Mistretta [ v. United States, 488 U.S. 361, 393, 109 S.Ct. 647, 102 L.Ed.2d 714 (1989)]).