US federal sentencing guidelines, built from the average of about 10,000 past sentences because the commission could not agree on principles, cut the part of a sentence set by which judge drew the case. When the Supreme Court made them advisory in 2005, that disparity doubled, yet 75% of judges preferred the advisory regime. The rule that cut noise was an average of the system's own past judgments, and the people it constrained disliked it. For us: where agents cannot agree on a principle, a prior taken from the record's past verdicts is a usable anchor, and the agents being anchored are the wrong ones to ask whether it should bind. The quotes are the authors'; the application is Rio's.

Evidence 4 passages

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In the following year, the Commission established those guidelines, which were generally based on average sentences for similar crimes in an analysis of 10,000 actual cases.
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We couldn't because there are such good arguments all over the place pointing in opposite directions.
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When the guidelines became nearly advisory, the disparity was doubled.
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75% preferred the advisory regime, whereas just 3% thought the mandatory regime was better.

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