Judge Rakoff wrote that the proposed sentence exposed the "utter travesty of justice that sometimes results from the guidelines' fetish with abstract arithmetic".
But Judge Rakoff rejected such a severe punishment, describing "the utter travesty of justice that sometimes results from the guidelines' fetish with abstract arithmetic, as well as the harm that guideline calculations can visit on human beings if not cabined by common sense".
There can be, wrote Mr. Rakoff, an "utter travesty of justice that sometimes results from the guidelines' fetish with abstract arithmetic, as well as the harm that guideline calculations can visit on human beings if not cabined by common sense".
With the announcement of his impending retirement from the bench, a great many commentators have attempted to articulate both Justice Stevens' influence on the American judicial landscape and his utter irreplaceability as a justice -- neither of which can be overstated.
As well they should, given the symbolic exceptionalism of his presidency and the modern Republican Party's utter disregard for economic justice, civil rights and the social safety net.
During the hearings, Lord Justice Ward uttered a haunting comment on the responsibilities the court was obliged to weigh.
These days, the study found, the justices collectively utter about 4,000 words in each hourlong argument, which is roughly double the loquaciousness rate in the mid-1980s.
10.39am: Chief Justice John Roberts uttered a line on Monday that's drawing attention from SCOTUS-watchers, as it could be perceived as him "tipping his hand" on the individual mandate: "The idea that the mandate is something separate from whether you want to call it a penalty or tax just doesn't seem to make much sense".
But in the oral arguments today, the political questions were never raised, and neither the lawyers nor the justices uttered the words "Republican" or "Democrat".
In both rounds of hearings involving the presidential vote over the last two weeks, he was the only justice not to utter a word.
