Law Commons^™

The Internationalization Of Lay Legal Decision-Making: Jury Resurgence And Jury Research, Richard O. Lempert

Articles

When I first began to study the jury more than thirty years ago, the topic of this Journal issue, jury systems around the world, was unthinkable. The use of juries, especially in civil litigation, had long been in decline, to the point of near extinction in England, the land of their birth, and the live question was whether the jury system would endure in the United States. It seemed clear that juries would not continue in their classic form, as many U.S. states, with the Supreme Court's eventual approval, mandated juries of less than twelve people and allowed verdicts to …

Venue In Missouri After Tort Reform, David J. Achtenberg

Faculty Works

Venue matters. Anyone who doubts it need only look to the venue wars waged in the Missouri Supreme Court during the last decades. Understandably, plaintiffs prefer unrestrictive venue rules so that they can file and try their cases in counties with plaintiff-friendly jury pools. Just as understandably, defendants prefer rules that restrict plaintiffs' ability to choose between multiple venues and, to the extent possible, rules that permit the defendant to select the counties in which they can be forced to defend their actions.

The passage of Missouri's 2005 Tort Reform Act represented an important legislative victory for defendants in this …