Discreet Discretion and Moderate Moderation in Judicial Sentencing: A commentary on Kenya’s Sentencing Policy Guidelines, 2016

Sentencing guidelines, judicial discretion and plea bargaining

The United States Sentencing Commission was created to develop federal sentencing guidelines, which restrict judicial discretion and were found to increase the average sentence length while leaving unchanged the likelihood of resolution through plea bargaining. A game theoretic model is developed in which a sentencing commission may impose guidelines or defer to judicial discretion; then a defe...

Comments on [Israeli] Proposal for Structuring Judicial Discretion in Sentencing

Judicial Politics and Sentencing Decisions∗

Racial and gender disparities are prevalent in the criminal justice system, but the sources of these disparities remain largely unknown. This paper investigates whether judge political affiliation contributes to these disparities using data on over 500,000 federal defendants linked to sentencing judge. Exploiting random case assignment, we find that Republican appointed judges sentence black de...

Discontinuous Tradition of Sentencing Discretion: Koon's Failure to Recognize the Reshaping of Judicial Discretion under the Guidelines, The

Looked at from a general science of law, the effective individualizing agency in the administration of justice is discretion .... Discretion is an authority conferred by law to act in certain conditions or situations in accordance with an official's or an official agency's own considered judgment and conscience .'

Judicial Fact-Finding at Sentencing