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On Tuesday, the Supreme Court continued its return to action with Beaird v. United States, a case about criminal sentencing. The court will decide exactly how closely judges are required to listen to guidelines of the United States Sentencing Commission over how long a convicted defendant can be jailed for. While the justices, especially Neil Gorsuch and Ketanji Brown Jackson, sparred over how to handle the court’s recent precedent weakening federal agency power, a concerning pattern re-emerged for the first time in this new term. What we have is a court with a nearly unrelenting drive to monopolize its own view of the law over everyone else’s.

In the U.S. criminal system, after a jury finds a person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, it is generally up to the district court judge to determine their sentence. One problem with that system is that different judges can have vastly different views on the true severity and punishment deserved for the same crime. To help remedy unfair disparity between sentences, Congress created the U.S. Sentencing Commission in the 1980s, an independent federal agency within the judicial branch. Headed by presidentially appointed judges and criminal law experts, the commission provides formal recommendations for the appropriate sentencing for various crimes. More specifically, it provides two types of writings: guidelines providing sentencing ranges (say: 24 to 48 months) and commentary providing more detail on how a judge is supposed to issue decisions within that range. The commentary in particular also instructs judges when they can enhance or decrease a sentence based on the facts of the case. For example, the judge who sentenced Elizabeth Holmes in her healthcare fraud suit relied on the commission guidelines for the initial number of financial penalties but then relied on the commentary to further........

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