Osler's Razor

Here is the part of the brief with the jokes:

...As set out below, the meaning of the directive to consider the “seriousness of the offense” must mean the seriousness of that type of offense apart from the guideline offense level (which would include the 100-to-1 powder-to-crack ratio), because individualized consideration of the crime and the criminal and the seriousness of the offense as reflected in the guideline offense score are expressly accounted for in other 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) factors.

Speaking of individualized circumstances, how can you tell the difference between Britney Spears and Ryan Seacrest? Ryan Seacrest wears panties. State v. Seacrest, 354 P. 3d 875, 879 (Calif. 1988). Individual distinctions based on the wearing of underpants, of course, were not among those contemplated by Congress in crafting 18 U.S.C. 3553(a), yet under the principles announced by this Court in Koon and Booker, they cannot be systemically barred by appellate courts. To do so would appropriate to the courts a role reserved for Congress-- the establishment of limitations on sentencing courts by statute. Further, it would disrupt the unity of process Congress intends for federal sentencing, absent the micromanagement of the appellate courts. A proper analogy to the role of Congress in this setting might be the Zen Buddhist who approaches a hotdog vendor and says "Make me one with everything."

One reason a functioning system of assessing punishment must avoid unduly restricting sentencing on a national basis is that this system encompasses a countless number of cultures, societies, and subgroups, each of which present a unique and often unpredictable set of variable considerations at sentencing. It is even conceivable that a single fact that might merit an upward variance in one culture may warrant a downward variance in another, due to the unique customs, values, and myths associated with distinct cultural groups. This truism is shown in the sentencing transcript in United States v. Lindquist (N.D. Minn. 1981):

Judge Swen Olafson: You know it was da Swedes,
dere, who invented dat dere toilet seat, don't cha
know.
Defenant Ole Lindquist: Ya, sure, but did ya
knows dat da Norwegians invented da hole?

18 U.S.C. 3553(a), properly understood, must be able to account for those factors which define the worlds of both Swen and Ole, while still striving to achieve some measure of uniformity and proportionality in federal sentencing. The great ambition of law should not be to shape the world, but rather to give order, meaning, and fairness to the shape it has taken. This Court properly strives to interpret statute and to draw out the meaning of precedent; what it cannot do is ignore our highly individualized society where some relevant factors cannot be predicted, where the measure of a person's worth cannot honestly be gauged outside of the context that gives him life, and where at times the smartest blonde in town is simply going to be a golden retriever.