A fitting take on SCOTUS sentencing cases fit to be tied

As she does so well, Dahlia Lithwick finds a way in this great Slate piece to cut through all the reasonableness mumbo-jumbo and cut to the heart of the Supreme Court’s work today. Her piece is entitled “Run-On Sentencing: The Supreme Court takes another crack at the sentencing mess,” and I found the first and last paragraphs riotously spot-on (and very flattering):

At the risk of an unfair generalization, I think the legal world sorts rather neatly into Booker people and non-Booker people.  One of my best friends is a Booker person.  Can talk about sentencing cases for hours. Days.  The wonderful Doug Berman is the Booker czar and his blog is the Booker holy grail. Me?  Not so Booker….

So just to catch you non-Booker people up on what you’ve missed in the last few years: There used to be a lack of uniformity in sentencing.  Congress created sentencing guidelines.  The court decided the guidelines were merely advisory.  Appeals courts said sometimes advisory guidelines are still mandatory.  District courts got confused.  And now the high court asks the parties to make immutable rules out of standards, and flexible standards out of rules.  Kimbrough and Gall think a good rule is that the guidelines should go away.  The Justice Department thinks a good rule is that the judges should go away.  And the court?  It may finally have to pick a side.