What is the current state of the law on sentencing in terrorism cases?

The statutes and Guidelines treat terrorism as a matter of serious criminal concern, but not as something new and different. The majority's implicit assumption that terrorism is different, and must be treated differently, thus flies in the face of the congressionally sanctioned structure of sentencing that applies to terrorism as well as all other kinds of federal criminal offenses. Our courts are well equipped to treat each offense and offender individually, and we should not create special sentencing rules and procedures for terrorists. In presiding over the many terrorism-related cases on their dockets, courts have treated other issues in terrorism cases in ways that do not differ appreciably from more broadly applicable doctrines. See, e.g., Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2079, 2083 (2011) (holding that ordinary qualified immunity standard protects officials in a suit alleging an unconstitutional use of the material witness statute for detaining terrorism sus-

Page 2882