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Sentencing: Learning From, And Worrying About, The States, Gerard E. Lynch

Faculty Scholarship

The Columbia Law Review's Symposium on sentencing, which took place less than two weeks after the Supreme Court's dramatic semi-invalidation of the federal sentencing guidelines, was certainly timely. Nevertheless, it is critical to understanding the Symposium's purposes to realize that it was not planned in response to United States v. Booker, or even to Blakely v. Washington. The Symposium was conceived before either case was decided, as a very conscious attempt to steer the discussion of sentencing away from Congress and the federal guidelines and toward states' experiences. The vast majority of criminals are sentenced in state …