Many criminal investigations of corporations are resolved by a Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) or its less frequently used cousin, a Non-Prosecution Agreement (NPA). These are essentially negotiated settlements between the Department of Justice and the defendant, in which the company agrees to certain sanctions and changes in behavior in exchange for avoiding criminal penalties. Typically the terms and conditions of such agreements are set by the prosecutors. Decisions about whether to charge at all, what charges to bring, and the terms of any resolution are at the core of prosecutorial discretion. But in 2015, in an unprecedented decision, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon rejected a DPA between prosecutors and a company called Fokker Services because he thought the company had gotten too sweet a deal. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit recently reversed that decision, chiding the judge for overstepping his bounds. As I wrote in