Digital Commons Network^™

Statistics In The Jury Box: How Jurors Respond To Mitochondrial Dna Match Probabilities, David H. Kaye, Valerie P. Hans, B. Michael Dann, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA …

Witchcraft And Statecraft: Liberal Democracy In Africa, Nelson Tebbe

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This Article addresses the prospects of liberal democracy in non-Western societies. It focuses on South Africa, one of the newest and most admired liberal democracies, and in particular on its efforts to recognize indigenous African traditions surrounding witchcraft and related occult practices. In 2004, Parliament passed a law that purports to regulate certain occult practitioners called traditional healers. Today, lawmakers are under pressure to go further and criminalize the practice of witchcraft itself. This Article presses two arguments. First, it contends that the 2004 statute is compatible with liberal principles of equal citizenship and the rule of law. Second, it …

Blinking On The Bench: How Judges Decide Cases, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

How do judges judge? Do they apply law to facts in a mechanical and deliberative way, as the formalists suggest they do, or do they rely on hunches and gut feelings, as the realists maintain? Debate has raged for decades, but researchers have offered little hard evidence in support of either model. Relying on empirical studies of judicial reasoning and decision making, we propose an entirely new model of judging that provides a more accurate explanation of judicial behavior. Our model accounts for the tendency of the human brain to make automatic, snap judgments, which are surprisingly accurate, but which …

Science In The Jury Box: Jurors' Views And Understanding Of Mitochondrial Dna Evidence, Valerie P. Hans, David H. Kaye, B. Michael Dann, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA …

International Law And Prosecutorial Discretion, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

After The Crash: Citizens' Perceptions Of Connective-Tissue Injury Lawsuits, Valerie P. Hans, Nicole Vadino

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Even though automobile accident cases comprise a substantial portion of the state jury trial caseload, the humble automobile case has attracted minimal scholarly attention. However, many members of the public believe that whiplash, a connective-tissue or soft-tissue injury from auto accidents, is oftentimes fraudulent. To explore public perceptions, a national survey included a scenario experiment that varied types of minor injuries from an automobile accident. As predicted, the plaintiff who experienced a bone fracture was seen as more likely to be suffering a real injury than a plaintiff who reported suffering from a connective-tissue injury. The fracture was also viewed …

The Nullification Of The Russian Jury: Lessons For Jury-Inspired Reform In Eurasia And Beyond, Stephen C. Thaman

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Exploring Lay Participation In Legal Decision-Making: Lessons From Mixed Tribunals, Sanja Kutnjak Ivkovic

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Citizens As Legal Decision Makers: An International Perspective, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Rebirth Of Japan’S Petit Quasi-Jury And Grand Jury Systems: A Cross-National Analysis Of Legal Consciousness And The Lay Participatory Experience In Japan And The U.S., Hiroshi Fukurai

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

"It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again": Williams V. Taylor, Wiggins V. Smith, Rompilla V. Beard And A (Partial) Return To The Guidelines Approach To The Effective Assistance Of Counsel, John H. Blume, Stacey D. Neumann

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Shoddy lawyering in capital cases is well documented. Many defendants facing the death penalty end up on death row not because of the heinousness of the crime they committed but rather because of the poor quality of trial counsel's performance. Despite the acknowledgment of sometimes shockingly poor representation by academics, litigators and even judges, most post-conviction claims of ineffective assistance of counsel are unsuccessful. Why? The legal standard for adjudicating these allegations which the Court adopted in Strickland v. Washington, which requires a defendant to demonstrate that his lawyer's performance was outside the "wide range of competent assistance" and that …

On The Very Idea Of Transitional Justice, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The phrase "transitional justice" has had an amazingly successful career at an early age. Popularized as an academic concept in the early 1990s in the aftermath of apartheid's collapse in South Africa, the phrase quickly gained traction in a variety of global contexts, including Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Cambodia, and Sierra Leone. A sizeable literature has been generated around it, so much so that one might even call it a sub-discipline with inter-disciplinary qualities. Nonetheless, the concept remains an enigma. It defines the contours of an entire field of intellectual inquiry, yet at the same time it hides more than it illuminates. …

Three Conceptual Problems With The Doctrine Of Joint Criminal Enterprise, Jens David Ohlin

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article dissects the Tadic court’s argument for finding the doctrine of joint criminal enterprise in the ICTY Statute. The key arguments are identified and each are found to be either problematic or insufficient to deduce the doctrine from the statute: the object and purpose of the statute to punish major war criminals, the inherently collective nature of war crimes and genocide and the conviction of war criminals for joint enterprises in World War II cases. The author criticizes this overreliance on international case law and the insufficient attention to the language of criminal statutes when interpreting conspiracy doctrines. The …

The Orwellian Military Commissions Act Of 2006, Michael C. Dorf

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In three decisions in 2004 and 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States rejected the sweeping claims by President Bush that his role as Commander in Chief entitled him to detain persons indefinitely and, if he chose, to subject them to war crimes trials before military commissions that did not have all of the procedural protections of courts martial. The Court's rulings, however, left open the possibility that, notwithstanding the treaty obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions, Congress could authorize the President to take the steps that he could not take unilaterally. In the Military Commissions …

Racism, Unreasonable Belief, And Bernhard Goetz, Stephen P. Garvey

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

How should the law respond when one person (D) kills another person (V), who is black, because D believes that V is about to kill him, but D would not have so believed if V had been white? Should D be exonerated on grounds of self-defense? The canonical case raising this question is People v. Goetz. Some commentators argue that norms of equal treatment and anti-discrimination require that D’s claim of self-defense be rejected. I argue that denying D’s claim of self-defense would be at odds with the principle that criminal liability should only be imposed on an actor if …

Transparency And Textuality: Wilkie Collins' Law Books, Bernadette A. Meyler

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article takes as its starting point the priority that Anglo-American legal thought has, in recent centuries, placed upon transparency, a priority that has relied, in large part, on the notion that the law should increasingly be recorded and publicly accessible. Through his representation of trial narratives - an extremely popular quasi-literary form during the nineteenth century - as well as the work of William Blackstone in his supposedly comprehensive Commentaries on the Laws of England, nineteenth-century novelist Wilkie Collins calls into question the idea that simply disseminating textual versions of the law or the records of legal processes will …

Applying The Access Principle In Law: The Responsibilities Of The Legal Scholar, Richard A. Danner

International Journal of Legal Information

This article discusses the responsibilities of legal scholars to make their published works openly accessible through the Internet, within the context of efforts to increase free and open access to legal information, and to improve access to scholarly literature in other disciplines. The article also considers the roles and responsibilities of the institutions that support the creation and communication of legal scholarship for improving access to legal information.

Received And Noted

International Journal of Legal Information

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews, Thomas W. Mills, Duncan Alford, Fred Dingledy, Veronica A. Foster, Karin Johnsrud, Jonathan Pratter, Sunil Rao, Scott Rasmussen, Herb Somers, Roy L. Sturgeon, Jean M. Wenger, James Wirrell, Carl A. Yirka

International Journal of Legal Information

No abstract provided.

Muhammad’S Social Justice Or Muslim Cant: Langdellianism And The Failures Of Islamic Finance, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Cornell International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Structural Reform In Criminal Defense: Relocating Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Claims, Eve Brensike Primus

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Blinking On The Bench: How Judges Decide Cases, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Respectful Consideration After Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon: Why The Supreme Court Owes More To The International Court Of Justice, Steven Arrigg Koh

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Manipulating Miranda: United States V. Frazier And The Case-In-Chief Use Of Post-Arrest, Pre-Miranda Silence, Marc Scott Hennes

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews

Cornell Law Review

No abstract provided.