Formal sentencing guidelines, which are increasingly seen as the best means of eliminating unwarranted disparity, have undoubted merits. Well-crafted guidelines can promote more transparent and coherent sentencing practices. Their primary goal will usually be to ensure that similarly situated offenders convicted of similar offences receive broadly similar penalties. This, in turn, should increase public confidence in the criminal justice system. Judicially-developed guidance has its own advantages. A judgment, unlike a statute or a formal guideline, must persuade its audience as to the merits of the decision reached. Appeal court sentencing judgments must (or ideally should) engage in some degree of moral reasoning so as to explain why a particular offence or offender deserves the penalty that is being imposed or upheld. Adjudication of this nature plays an important role in stimulating debate and deliberation about the purposes of punishment, the appropriate use of particular sentencing options, the relevance of various offence- and offender-related factors and other fundamental questions about which opinions will inevitably change over time. Although they may have distinct epistemic properties and different objectives, formal guidelines and judicially-developed principles have their own unique merits. We should therefore aim for a system that incorporates the best qualities of both. In practice, this means that guidelines should be so constructed as to leave space for judicial deliberation about fundamental principles and current practice. In this way, guideline creators and courts can continue to learn from each other.

中文翻译：

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选句的判断与计算

正式量刑指南越来越被视为消除无端差异的最佳手段，其优点毋庸置疑。精心设计的指南可以促进更加透明和连贯的量刑实践。他们的主要目标通常是确保被判犯有类似罪行的情况相似的罪犯受到大致相似的处罚。反过来，这应该会增加公众对刑事司法系统的信心。司法发展的指导有其自身的优势。与法规或正式指南不同，判决必须说服其听众就所达成的决定是非曲直。上诉法院的量刑判决必须（或理想情况下应该）进行某种程度的道德推理，以解释为什么特定的罪行或违法者应该受到正在施加或维持的惩罚。这种性质的裁决在激发关于惩罚目的、特定量刑选项的适当使用、各种犯罪和犯罪者相关因素的相关性以及其他基本问题的辩论和审议方面发挥着重要作用，这些问题的意见将随着时间的推移不可避免地发生变化. 尽管它们可能具有不同的认知特性和不同的目标，但正式的指导方针和司法发展的原则有其独特的优点。因此，我们的目标应该是一个结合了两者最佳品质的系统。在实践中，这意味着指南的构建应为司法审议基本原则和当前实践留出空间。通过这种方式，指南制定者和法院可以继续相互学习。