United States v. Bailey

“This caused one bright professor to become "puzzled" since, so he suggests, I apparently ignore a portion of a statute that Congress wrote and I am otherwise big on listening to Congress. See Douglas A. Berman, A punchy, though puzzling, perspective on parsimony (Apr. 19, 2005), available at http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2005/week16/
index.html. The answer to the professor's (mock?) perplexity, is that, using my Booker discretion, I would read the "parsimony" provision with the Guidelines heavily in mind, and he, and others who abhor Congress' harshness, would read the "parsimony" provision without the Guidelines much in mind. Tell me, honestly, dear readers, which discretionary approach is more consistent with (1) what Congress and the Commission intended, (2) how statutes (as a whole) are to be construed, (3) the remedy chosen by the Supreme Court in Booker, and (4) the proper role of federal judges under Article III? If you pick Doug Berman's view, then, as Emily Litella used to say, "never mind."”
United States v. Bailey, 369 F. Supp. 2d 1090, 1092 (D. Neb. 2005)

    

Note: The blog post cited in the case, "A punchy, though puzzling, perspective on parsimony," is at the following URL: http://sentencing.typepad.com/
sentencing_law_and_policy/2005/04/a_punchy_though.html. 

Return to the main Cases Citing Legal Blogs page.