Justices Take on Career Criminal Law Again for Next Term (2)

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed June 28 to take up its latest in a long-running series of cases interpreting a tough-on-crime federal sentencing law.

Much of the high court’s recent battles involving the Armed Career Criminal Act—a three-strikes law imposing fifteen-year mandatory minimums for gun convicts who have three prior convictions for violent felonies or serious drug offenses—involved interpretation of what prior state convictions qualify as violent felonies.

But now the justices will look at the serious drug offense part, and whether it requires the same interpretive approach that the court has taken in the violent felony context.

Notably, both ...