The Arithmetic of Justice: Calculating Restitution for Mortgage Fraud
The Mandatory Victims Restitution Act requires restitution for federal crimes involving property. In particular, the defendant is required to return any property taken, or, if return is impossible, to pay for the victim’s loss, which may be offset by a partial return of the property. In mortgage fraud cases, this usually entails calculating the lender’s loss — an unpaid loan — and offsetting that loss by the value of the collateral for the loan, which the lender recovers. The circuits disagree about how to value the recovered collateral as an offset to restitution: Should its value be determined by its appraised fair market value or, conversely, by its final foreclosure price when the victim-lender sells it? This Note concludes that courts should presumptively use the foreclosure price, except when that price can be shown not to approximate the value at the date of return.
The Original Intent of Uniformity in Federal Sentencing
This Article recounts the rise and evolution of the uniformity ideal in federal sentencing, that is, the notion that similarly situated offenders should be treated similarly, and differently situated offenders differently. The uniformity ideal was championed by many critics of rehabilitative approaches in the 1970s and strongly influenced the adoption of federal sentencing guidelines in the 1980s. However, uniformity has been an unstable concept, with proponents articulating quite different views as to why uniformity is desirable and how it should be implemented. Much of the difficulty stems from the tension between two distinct approaches to uniformity, which are described here as the predictability and purposes paradigms. Under the predictability paradigm, offenders should be distinguished only in ways that can be anticipated well in advance of sentencing. Under the purposes paradigm, sentencing factors are deemed relevant based on their contribution to recognized objectives of sentencing, such as just deserts and rehabilitation. Prior to the Supreme Court's 2005 decision in United States v. Booker, trends in federal sentencing law favored predictability. Booker marks a return to the purposes approach. Additionally, Booker has reinvigorated an important, but much-neglected, aspect of the thinking of uniformity advocates in the 1970s: the view that the sentencing process should embody respect for the dignity of defendants in a manner that is consistent with American ideals of individual liberty and status-equality. Legislative proposals to reverse Booker threaten to undermine this dignitary agenda by enhancing prosecutorial power over defendants.
Mathematical Time and Physical Time in the Theory Of Relativity
In the Theory of Relativity time is an imaginary quantity that can not be observed; it is a multiplication of a number that indicates duration of material change and number i that is an imaginary number. i on the square is -1. Time i⁄t is a mathematical time that describes the speed and the duration of material change. In the Universe one can observe physical time only as a stream of material change. It is not that change run in physical time, change itself is physical time.. Distinction between imaginary mathematical time and visible physical time opens some new perspectives into interpretation of Theory of Relativity. c