An international view on increased post-Booker sentences

A few months ago, as detailed in this post, I received a thoughtful e-mail from a self-described “retired Australian lawyer/law professor” suggesting that international law ought to play a role in the post-Booker world.  As noted in that prior post, this foreign correspondent suggested international law precluded sentencing judges from imposing an increased sentence post-Booker based on pre-Booker conduct.

Today I heard again from my Aussie pen-pal, who was moved to write by Judge Posner’s decision this week in Goldberg (discussed at length here) which seems to condone the possibility of increasing sentences after a Booker remand.  In an interesting and brief note, which can be downloaded below, he explain his “view that international law, as applied by federal courts, should prevent a federal court imposing a more severe sentence than a defendant would have received had the Guidelines remained mandatory.” The note concludes by expressing hope that one of Posner’s “former colleagues at U of Chicago Law School [will] lend him an international law text and prompt him to re-think and re-write what he has written before judges lower down the system take him at his word.”

Download aussie_view_on_posner_and_denial_of_human_rights.doc