What Happens Now? Sentencing in Antitrust Cases After Booker

On January 12, 2005, the United States Supreme Court handed down its much-anticipated decision in United States v. Booker¹ and held that the mandatory scheme of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (the "Sentencing Guidelines" or "Guidelines"), when coupled with its reliance upon judicial fact finding, is not compatible with the guarantees of the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This decision follows the ruling handed down last summer by the Supreme Court in Blakely v. Washington² in which the Court invalidated a state court sentence imposed pursuant to the Washington Sentencing Reform Act. After Blakely, many commentators predicted that the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, as written, were doomed to constitutional extinction given their similarity to the Washington statute. In large part, the Booker decision met these predictions as the Court declared that district judges would no longer be required to follow the Sentencing Guidelines and that sentences calculated thereunder