Sentencing

Online
Essay
A Call For Clarity: Drug Predicates Under § 4B1.1
Mayanka Dhingra
Mayanka Dhingra is a J.D. Candidate at The University of Chicago Law School, Class of 2027. She thanks Parsa Aghel, Dani O’Connell, and the Online team for their feedback and support in refining the piece.

Each year, more than half of criminal defendants subject to the career offender sentencing enhancement are those with prior drug convictions. Because the goal of the Sentencing Guidelines is to “inject transparency, consistency, and fairness” into federal sentencing, clarity on how courts should assess decriminalized drug offenses as § 4B1.1 predicates is needed to restore uniformity to the system and satisfy the Guidelines’ original goals. This Essay calls upon the Sentencing Commission to clarify its intent, place time limits on decriminalized drug predicates for § 4B1.1, and restore greater uniformity to the system.

Criminal Law Sentencing
2
Essay
Booker Reconsidered
Jonathan S. Masur
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School

I thank Frank Easterbrook, Tom Gorman, Bernard Harcourt, Carissa Hessick, Richard McAdams, and David Sklansky for helpful comments.

Criminal Law Sentencing
2
Article
75.2
Reviewing the Sentencing Guidelines: Judicial Politics, Empirical Evidence, and Reform
Max M. Schanzenbach
Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
Emerson H. Tiller
Stanford Clinton Senior Research Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law

The authors would like to thank Jason Friedman, Ben Schaye, and Grace Tabib for excellent research assistance. The authors also thank participants in workshops at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and the University of Minnesota School of Law for helpful comments.

Criminal Law Empirical Analysis Sentencing

Volumes