I can’t speak for the disagrees (of which I was not one), but I was envisioning something like this:
You are one of ten trial judges in country X, which gives a lot of deference to trial judges on sentencing. Your nine colleagues apply a level of punitiveness that you think is excessive; they would hand out 10 years’ imprisonment for a crime that you—if not considering the broader community practices—would find warrants five years. Although citizens of county X have a range of opinions, the idea of sentencing for 10 years seems not inconsistent with the median voter’s views. The other judges are set in their ways and have life tenure, so you are unable to affect the sentences they hand down in any way. Do you:
(a) sentence to five years, because you think it is the appropriate sentence based on your own judgment;
(b) impose a ten-year sentence that you find excessive, because it prevents the injustice of unequal treatment based on the arbitrary spin of the assignment wheel; or
(c) split the difference, imposing somewhere between five and ten years, accepting both that you will find the sentence too high and that there is an unwarranted disparity, but limiting the extent to which either goal is compromised.
I would be somewhere in camp (c), while Ben sounds like he may be closer to camp (a). I imagine many people in camp (b) would disagree-vote Ben, while people in camp (c) might agree, disagree, or not vote.
I can’t speak for the disagrees (of which I was not one), but I was envisioning something like this:
You are one of ten trial judges in country X, which gives a lot of deference to trial judges on sentencing. Your nine colleagues apply a level of punitiveness that you think is excessive; they would hand out 10 years’ imprisonment for a crime that you—if not considering the broader community practices—would find warrants five years. Although citizens of county X have a range of opinions, the idea of sentencing for 10 years seems not inconsistent with the median voter’s views. The other judges are set in their ways and have life tenure, so you are unable to affect the sentences they hand down in any way. Do you:
(a) sentence to five years, because you think it is the appropriate sentence based on your own judgment;
(b) impose a ten-year sentence that you find excessive, because it prevents the injustice of unequal treatment based on the arbitrary spin of the assignment wheel; or
(c) split the difference, imposing somewhere between five and ten years, accepting both that you will find the sentence too high and that there is an unwarranted disparity, but limiting the extent to which either goal is compromised.
I would be somewhere in camp (c), while Ben sounds like he may be closer to camp (a). I imagine many people in camp (b) would disagree-vote Ben, while people in camp (c) might agree, disagree, or not vote.