Morning Booker insights

There are a range of interesting Booker items this morning. 

• In this Los Angeles Times commentary, Professor Alan Dershowitz discusses the Supreme Court Justices as “Prima Donnas in Robes” and has particularly harsh words for Justice Ginsburg’s failure to explain her votes and for Chief Justice Rehnquist’s failure to “to get individual justices to act as an institution.”

• In today’s Wall Street Journal, Gary Fields examines, in an article entitled “Ruling on Sentencing Guidelines May Also Affect Corporate Crime,” what Booker might mean for the federal corporate sentencing guidelines.  You need an on-line subscription to get the article here, but Peter Henning at the White Collar Crime Prof Blog has a terrific post here discussing the article and explaining why Booker‘s “effect on corporate prosecutions will be minimal, if non-existent, for at least three reasons.”

In addition, an insightful reader has encouraged me to spotlight this article from the weekend out of New Orleans, which shows that more than a few judges may want to use their new discretion to impose sentences that are, in some cases, harsher than what the federal guidelines previously allowed.  (Of course, whether due process will allow that to happen for crimes committed before the Booker ruling is one of the many complicated legal issues that will need to be sorted out in the weeks and months ahead.)