Blurred Lines: Did Booker Change Federal Sentencing Outcomes?

This article considers whether United States v. Booker, the 2005 Supreme Court decision that replaced the then-mandatory federal sentencing guidelines system with an advisory scheme, had any enduring impact on sentencing outcomes. Commemorating Booker’s recent twentieth anniversary requires a balancing act: at once, recognizing the decision’s watershed impact while avoiding claims of lasting change where little exists. The criminal defense community hailed the ruling as a kind of liberation from the guidelines’ dispassionate rigidity. Today, while most lawyers and defendants would still prefer the current system, a legitimate question exists about Booker’s actual effect on federal sentencing.

I propose that the benefits to criminal defendants have been meaningful, if modest, for reasons that encompass much of the sentencing process—including persistent race-based disparities in sentencing and the overarching severity of the federal criminal justice system.