New (and new look) issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter covers "Booker at Twenty"

For a host of reasons, I am very pleased and very excited to report on the online publication of the latest issue of the Federal Sentencing Reporter titled "Booker at Twenty."  This blog got started just a month before the Supreme Court's landmark 2004 Blakely ruling which dramatically disrupted state and federal sentencing practices and led to the remarkable dueling, dual 2005 Booker ruling(s) making the federal sentencing guidelines "effectively advisory."  I sometimes find it hard to believe that the SCOTUS-invented Booker federal sentencing regime has remained in place for two decades and also that so much and so little has changed regarding federal sentencing law, policy and practice over this period.  

A host of substantive, procedural and structural stories concerning Booker are astutely covered in a series of articles and related materials appearing in this new FSR issue.  The FSR editors feel especially fortunate that the current Chair of the US Sentencing Commission, Judge Carlton Reeves, co-authored an article with Counsel to the Chair, Con Reynolds, for this issue under the title "Meeting the Demand for Democracy in Sentencing."   That article is just one of many in the issue reflecting on Booker then and now.  And the issue begins with an introductory essay authored by me and Steve Chanenson titled "Two Decades Later."

Excitingly, the new publisher of FSR, Duke University Press, has made all the contents for this issue freely available for download for the next few months.  I highly encourage all sentencing fans to check out all the terrific articles and materials in this new (and new look) FSR.

As the cover posted here reveals, the Federal Sentencing Reporter has new look thanks to great work by folks at Duke University Press.  The contents of FSR, substantively and visually, have not significantly changed as we start publication of the journal's 37th(!) volume.  But savvy readers may see that FSR is now going to produce four (longer) issues per volume, and also that we have had the great forture to add Jonathan Wroblewski as a primary FSR editor.   (Jonathan also authored a must-read piece for this issue titled "The King Is Dead, Long Live the King: Booker v. United States and Its Place in the History of Federal Sentencing Law and Policy.")

Speaking for all the FSR editors, I am extremely grateful to everyone involved with FSR, past and present, and I sincerely hope everyone will check out the new (look) issue and share my optimistic views about FSR's future.