Historical perspective on Booker
Fordham Law Professor Ian Weinstein was kind enough to send me, and kind enough to allow me to post, a paper he put together for an upcoming NYC Bar Association panel on Booker. The paper, which can be downloaded below, is entitled “The Revenge of Mullaney v. Wilbur: U.S. v. Booker and The Reassertion of Judicial Limits on Legislative Power to Define Crimes.”
As the title suggests, Ian’s piece places the story of Apprendi, Blakely, and Booker in some important historical context. In this respect, the piece is in the same vein as the article entitled The Roots and Realities of Blakely which I wrote for the Winter 2005 issue of the Criminal Justice Magazine. But Ian’s fresh piece not only connects the Court’s recent jurisprudence to “the sentencing revolution” (which is my main focus), but also to a number of important broader criminal justice transformations. The piece provides an enriching perspective on both the sentencing doctrines and sentencing policies which surround Booker.