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Race Disparity Under Advisory Guidelines: Dueling Assessments And Potential Responses, Ryan W. Scott
Race Disparity Under Advisory Guidelines: Dueling Assessments And Potential Responses, Ryan W. Scott
Articles by Maurer Faculty
Dueling studies of race disparity, one by the U.S. Sentencing Commission (USSC, 2010) and an alternative analysis published in this issue by Ulmer, Light, and Kramer (2011), diverge sharply in their methodological choices and in their characterization of trends in federal sentencing. The Commission’s study suggests a marked increase in race disparity, differences in sentencing outcomes between racial groups that cannot be explained by controlling for relevant nonrace factors, after the Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Booker (2005) and Gall v. United States (2007). Those decisions rendered the federal Sentencing Guidelines advisory and set a highly deferential standard …
Inter-Judge Sentencing Disparity After Booker: A First Look, Ryan W. Scott
Inter-Judge Sentencing Disparity After Booker: A First Look, Ryan W. Scott
Articles by Maurer Faculty
A central purpose of the Sentencing Reform Act was to reduce inter-judge sentencing disparity, driven not by legitimate differences between offenders and offense conduct, but by the philosophy, politics, or biases of the sentencing judge. The federal Sentencing Guidelines, despite their well-recognized deficiencies, succeeded in reducing that form of unwarranted disparity. But in a series of decisions from 2005 to 2007, the Supreme Court rendered the Guidelines advisory (Booker), set a highly deferential standard for appellate review (Gall), and explicitly authorized judges to reject the policy judgments of the Sentencing Commission (Kimbrough). Since then, the Commission has received extensive anecdotal …