The Sentencing Guidelines as a Not-So-Model Penal Code

We are accustomed to thinking about the criminal law, and the procedures for enforcing it, as divided into two separate stages. The first stage – the subject of penal codes and jury trials – concerns the definition of culpable conduct and the adjudication of guilt. The second stage – sentencing – concerns the consequences of conviction for the offender. Only rarely do we acknowledge that the conventional separation of these stages into compartments is highly misleading. The articles in this Issue of FSR address, in one way or another, the extent to which the concerns of the substantive criminal law and the law of sentencing are in fact closely integrated. To a substantial extent, the federal sentencing guidelines can be seen as a continuation, from a very different philosophical perspective, of the effort to reform the federal criminal code. How successfully do the guidelines accomplish this end