Reading for a virtual waiting room

While we all wait for Booker and Fanfan, I can suggest some useful (old and new) sentencing reading materials to keep us occupied in this virtual waiting room:

• Though now nearly two months old, the US Sentencing Commission’s 15-year report deserves, in my view, far more attention than it has received. (The full report can be accessed here, its executive summary can be accessed here, and my summary of the executive summary is here.)

• Though now essentially one month old, I just received my advance hard copy of the latest Federal Sentencing Reporter issue covering Blakely — FSR Volume 17, Number 2 (Dec. 2004) entitled “Further Implications of Blakely.” (That issue and other FSR issues are available on-line here.)

• Hot off the presses, the Winter 2005 issue of the Criminal Justice magazine, which is published quarterly by the Criminal Justice Section of the ABA, has a lengthy cover story on Blakely, as well as a shorter article on the recommendations of the ABA’s Kennedy Commission, along with its usual collection of fine criminal justice commentary and analysis.  (I wrote the Blakely piece, which is entitled “The Roots and Realities of Blakely,” and I am told the issue should appear at this site before long.)

In addition, the set of comments flowing from this morning’s post about the non-arrival of Booker and Fanfan make for compelling and informative reading of a different sort.