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Why March To A Uniform Beat?: Adding Honesty And Proportionality To The Individualized Tunes Of Federal Sentencing, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Jelani Jefferson Exum

The Federal Sentencing Guidelines were initially created to increase uniformity in sentencing by diminishing the influence of individual judges’ biases in the sentencing determination. However, now that the Guidelines have been rendered advisory by the Supreme Court in United States v. Booker , and circuit courts have been directed to review sentences for “unreasonableness”, most of the Supreme Court’s attention has been focused on ensuring the preservation of uniformity, rather than recognizing the continued importance of bias reduction. The assumption, it seems, is that once uniformity in sentencing is achieved then the potential of judicial bias has been erased. However, …