I'm a slow and particularly boring blogger when it comes to legal issues, but the Supreme Court's Decision to gut mandatory sentencing it extremely interesting to me. (Go read Berman for a professional take, this is just law student level opinion). Frankly, I hated the sentencing guidelines, for both their constitutional failure of sentencing based on fact not detrimental by the jury, and their ability to completely screw over minor offenders who happened to commit politically incorrect crimes. Not to mention the way they de facto transfered vast sentencing authority to federal prosecutors. I've personally seen the sentencing guidlines work badly, and I've seen the horribly inequitable resault of information that was not presented to the jury used for sentencing purposes. SCOTUS, got this one right even if it did take entirely too long between Blakley and Booker to do it. Now if only congress doesn't screw it up.