Explaining Judicial Behavior on the Federal Sentencing Guidelines
Loading...
Date
2009-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Until 2005, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines were mandatory, meaning judges were bound to sentence a criminal defendant within a prescribed range based on elements of the offense and criminal history. In the 2005 case United States v. Booker, however, the Supreme Court declared the Guidelines unconstitutional and as a remedy made them merely advisory. The ruling created a multitude of issues, most of which the Supreme Court left to lower court judges to sort out. Political scientists have done much work on the determinants of judicial behavior and have found ideology, whether a judge is liberal or conservative, to be the key factor. The question remained as to whether this would hold for lower court judges on these issues. The purpose of this research is to provide insight into this question. It identifies and codes judges’ positions on issues relating to Booker from courts of appeals opinions and uses multinomial logistical regression analysis and probability estimates to look at potential explanatory variables. These variables are: ideology, ideological extremism, judicial workload, and whether a judge has served on a district court, which is responsible for sentencing in the first instance. The results so far suggest that judicial workload is the strongest explanation. Judges with higher workloads are more likely to choose outcomes that tend to lessen their future workload. These results suggest that ideology is not the driving force of lower court decision making and that a main concern of judges is ensuring an efficient criminal justice system. These results have significant implications for the criminal justice system. The overwhelming majority of criminal appeals does not reach the Supreme Court and are dealt with by the appellate courts. The behavior of these judges is then of direct importance to many criminal defendants. By discerning their behavior, the ever changing landscape of federal sentencing can be better understood by actors in the criminal justice system.
Description
Keywords
Judicial Behavior, Appellate Courts, Federal Sentencing Guidelines