3 ms·

Guidelines are the opposite of a rule-based system, as you are free to use your judgement and use them for comparison only. Guidelines are not a black box that

• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Guidelines are not a black box that spits out a number of month in prison. The Sentencing Guidelines are exactly a white box (a black box has concealed internal operations) that spits out sentences. OTOH, since they aren't mandatory (by Supreme Court ruling; they were originally statutorily mandatory), they don't produce exactly the same rule-based system as they superficially represent.