If Only Politicians Showed This Kind of Follow Through

I've written a lot in the past about the Supreme Court's Booker decision and how it really threw the world of federal sentencing into a state of higgledy-piggledy. Things were so messed up that trial judges within the same district couldn't agree on how things should work. Judge Kopf in the District of Nebraska wrote in a footnote to a decision back in 2005:

I like and have great respect for Judge Pratt. Nothing I say in this memorandum is intended as a personal criticism of him. I simply (but strongly) disagree with his legal reasoning on this subject. While I take the liberty of using Judge Pratt's decision as an example of a methodology that I think is incorrect, I certainly do not intend to single him out. Indeed, and to be fair, many of my colleagues (Judges Bataillon and Strom, for example) side with Judge Pratt. If I turn out to be wrong, I will buy them all a beer.

Judge Kopf later extended that bet to Doug Berman over at Sentencing Law & Policy. Today we learn from Doug that Judge Kopf is, indeed, a man of his word.