Fear of Judging: Sentencing Guidelines in the Federal Courts.

• Position: Review

Sentencing Guidelines

by Kate Stith and Jose A.Cabranes

Fear of Judging, Sentencing Guidelines in the Federal Courts is a full scale history, analysis, and critique of the sentencing guidelines which came into effect in 1987.

"This is the first book-length appraisal of the guidelines' history and operation. The authors reveal the banality, artificiality, incomprehensibility, arbitrariness, and complexity of guidelines sentencing as well as the evasion and hypocrisy that the guidelines have encouraged," says Albert W. Alschuler of the University of Chicago Law School.

Stith is a former...