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Full-Text Articles in Law
Judges, Juries, And Punitive Damages: Empirical Analyses Using The Civil Justice Survey Of State Courts 1992, 1996, And 2001 Data, Theodore Eisenberg, Paula L. Hannaford, Michael Heise, Neil Lafountain, Brian Ostrom, Martin T. Wells, G. Thomas Munsterman
Judges, Juries, And Punitive Damages: Empirical Analyses Using The Civil Justice Survey Of State Courts 1992, 1996, And 2001 Data, Theodore Eisenberg, Paula L. Hannaford, Michael Heise, Neil Lafountain, Brian Ostrom, Martin T. Wells, G. Thomas Munsterman
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
We analyze thousands of trials from a substantial fraction of the nation's most populous counties. Evidence across ten years and three major datasets suggests that: (1) juries and judges award punitive damages in approximately the same ratio to compensatory damages, (2) the level of punitive damages awards has not increased, and (3) juries' and judges' tendencies to award punitive damages differ in bodily injury and no-bodily-injury cases. Jury trials are associated with a greater rate of punitive damages awards in financial injury cases. Judge trials are associated with a greater rate of punitive damages awards in bodily injury cases.
Justice Stevens, The Peremptory Challenge, And The Jury (Symposium), Nancy S. Marder
Justice Stevens, The Peremptory Challenge, And The Jury (Symposium), Nancy S. Marder
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Train Our Jurors, Jonathan Koehler
Train Our Jurors, Jonathan Koehler
Faculty Working Papers
Lay jurors are often legally and logically unprepared for trial. In response, it is recommended that jurors receive training in how to make better legal decisions. This chapter suggests that jurors should receive comprehensive training in critical legal doctrines and in how to reason with legal evidence. Jurors who cannot be trained to achieve minimal levels of competence (in the law or in basic reasoning) should be excused from jury service. Suggestions are given as to how policy makers and researchers who are interested in jury reform may wish to proceed.
The Limits Of The Olympian Court: Common Law Judging Versus Error Correction In The Supreme Court, Carolyn Shapiro
The Limits Of The Olympian Court: Common Law Judging Versus Error Correction In The Supreme Court, Carolyn Shapiro
All Faculty Scholarship
Throughout its history, the Supreme Court has struggled to control its caseload and to avoid becoming a court of error correction. Instead, it applies its resources to matters of particular national importance and to promoting uniformity in the law. This Article argues that the Court's approach to maintaining uniformity fails to provide adequate guidance to the lower courts. The Court focuses on resolving disagreements among the lower courts over what rules and standards to apply. But the Court largely ignores the question of whether those directives are applied in a consistent or predictable way. As a result, there are areas …
Rescuing Judicial Accountability From The Realm Of Political Rhetoric, Charles G. Geyh
Rescuing Judicial Accountability From The Realm Of Political Rhetoric, Charles G. Geyh
Articles by Maurer Faculty
The article examines the threat to judicial independence from political calls for more judicial accountability. The author begins by defining judicial accountability and discussing its purposes before breaking the concept down into three categories: institutional accountability, behavioral accountability, and decisional accountability. This process reveals that in the judicial accountability family, there is but one discrete sub-species, situated in the decisional accountability genus, that does not further accountability's proper purpose and is therefore conceptually problematic: direct political accountability for competent and honest judicial decision-making error that the politicians desire and a serious threat to judicial independence. The critical question becomes one …
Understanding The Person Beneath The Robe: Practical Methods For Neutralizing Harmful Judicial Biases, Evan R. Seamone
Understanding The Person Beneath The Robe: Practical Methods For Neutralizing Harmful Judicial Biases, Evan R. Seamone
Journal Articles
This article presents hands-on self-awareness techniques for use by judges, arbitrators, members of commissions, and other legal decision-makers who are confronted with complex cases. All too often, these judges are expected to make the “right” decisions without knowing how to accomplish this task. While judges, no doubt, are capable of applying the law to a case, this is only one aspect of righteous behavior. This article is concerned with the related expectation that judges are capable of rendering fair and impartial decisions. No matter how much training they receive, judges can only avoid biases that are known to them.
Pro Se Defendants And The Appointment Of Advisory Counsel, H. Patrick Furman
Pro Se Defendants And The Appointment Of Advisory Counsel, H. Patrick Furman
Publications
This article provides an overview of advisory counsel used to assist pro se criminal defendants, including the appointment and duties of advisory counsel, ethical obligations, and considerations for trial judges and prosecutors.
Age And Tenure Of The Justices And Productivity Of The U.S. Supreme Court: Are Term Limits Necessary?, Joshua C. Teitelbaum
Age And Tenure Of The Justices And Productivity Of The U.S. Supreme Court: Are Term Limits Necessary?, Joshua C. Teitelbaum
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
This Article examines the relationship between the productivity of the U.S. Supreme Court and the age and tenure of the Supreme Court Justices. The motivation for this Article is the Supreme Court Renewal Act of 2005 (SCRA) and other recent proposals to impose term limits for Supreme Court Justices. The authors of the SCRA and others suggest that term limits are necessary because, inter alia, increased longevity and terms of service of the Justices have resulted in a decline in the productivity of the Court as measured by the number of cases accepted for review and the number of opinions …
Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington
Checks And Balances: Congress And The Federal Court, Paul D. Carrington
Faculty Scholarship
This essay was published as a chapter in Reforming the Supreme Court: Term Limits for Justices (Paul D. Carrington & Roger Cramton eds, Carolina Academic Press 2006). Its point is that Congress has long neglected its duty implicit in the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers to constrain the tendency of the Court, the academy and the legal profession to inflate the Court's status and power. The term "life tenure" is a significant source of a sense of royal status having not only the adverse cultural effects noted by Nagel, but also doleful effects on the administration and enforcement of …