The Framework of Judicial Sentencing: A Study in Legal Decision Making

Austin Lovegrove examines the thinking of judges as they sentence multiple offenders, and identifies the strategies judges have developed to help them apply sentencing law in individual cases, based on their responses when asked to "think aloud" while undertaking sentencing problems. Giving increased specificity to legal analyses of the sentencing process, Dr. Lovegrove enables the appropriateness of the judicial approach to be evaluated, and offers a basis for rule-based and numerical guidelines by making what is currently a largely intuitive process more deliberative.