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In Search Of The Booker Revolution, Ryan W. Scott

Ryan W. Scott

In 2005, the Supreme Court in United States v. Booker rendered the United States Sentencing Guidelines advisory. Arriving after eighteen years of complex and mandatory sentencing rules, the decision initially was heralded as revolutionary, both by critics and defenders of the federal Guidelines. But subsequent reports by the Sentencing Commission have shown few signs of a Booker revolution, revealing surprisingly minor changes. The existing research on post-Booker sentencing is incomplete, however, because it has not examined the response of individual judges to the decision. That omission is critical, given that the reduction of inter-judge disparity was the central purpose of …