The Supreme Court ruled today in this decision in U.S. v. Booker that the federal sentencing guidelines must satisfy the standards of the Sixth Amendment as applied in the Court’s earlier ruling in Blakely v. Washington. Accordingly, the Supreme Court has set aside two provisions of the guidelines that made them mandatory.
Here is the initial NY Times article on the Supreme Court’s decision, but for more thorough analysis of the decision, check out Professor Berman’s blog.