Law Commons^™

Continued Vitality Of Structured Sentencing Following Blakely: The Effectiveness Of Voluntary Guidelines, The , John F. Pfaff

Faculty Scholarship

In two recent opinions, Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively invalidated the binding nature of sentencing guidelines used by many states and the federal government over the past thirty years. Not surprisingly, numerous commentators have asserted that Blakely and Booker profoundly altered the nature of sentencing in the United States. But these claims have been made without any meaningful empirical consideration of whether viable alternatives exist. This Article fills that gap. It explores the extent to which voluntary, nonbinding criminal sentencing guidelines influence the sentencing behavior of state trial judges. In particular, it …