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Full-Text Articles in Law
Visualizing Dna Proof, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos
Visualizing Dna Proof, Nicholas L. Georgakopoulos
Nicholas L Georgakopoulos
DNA proof inherently involves the use of probability theory, which is often counterintuitive. Visual depictions of probability theory, however, can clarify the analysis and make it tractable. A DNA hit from a large database is a notoriously difficult probability theory issue, yet the visuals should enable courts and juries to handle it. The Puckett facts are an example of a general approach: A search in a large DNA database produces a hit for a cold crime from 1972 San Francisco. Probability theory allows us to process the probabilities that someone else in the database, someone not in the database, or …
Inefficient Evidence, Alex Stein
Inefficient Evidence, Alex Stein
Alex Stein
Why set up evidentiary rules rather than allow factfinders to make decisions by considering all relevant evidence? This fundamental question has been the subject of unresolved controversy among scholars and policymakers since it was raised by Bentham at the beginning of the nineteenth century. This Article offers a surprisingly straightforward answer: An economically minded legal system must suppress all evidence that brings along a negative productivity-expense balance and is therefore inefficient. Failure to suppress inefficient evidence will result in serious diseconomies of scale. To operationalize this idea, I introduce a “signal-to-noise” method borrowed from statistics, science, and engineering. This method …
The New Doctrinalism: Implications For Evidence Theory, Alex Stein
The New Doctrinalism: Implications For Evidence Theory, Alex Stein
Alex Stein
This Article revisits and refines the organizing principles of evidence law: case specificity, cost minimization, and equal best. These three principles explain and justify all admissibility and sufficiency requirements of the law of evidence. The case-specificity principle requires that factfinders base their decisions on the relative plausibility of the stories describing the parties’ entitlement–accountability relationship. The cost-minimization principle demands that factfinders minimize the cost of errors and the cost of avoiding errors as a total sum. The equal-best principle mandates that factfinders afford every person the maximal feasible protection against risk of error while equalizing that protection across the board. …
Understanding The Law Of Evidence Through The Lens Of Signal-To-Noise, Alex Stein
Understanding The Law Of Evidence Through The Lens Of Signal-To-Noise, Alex Stein
Alex Stein
No abstract provided.
Are People Probabilistically Challenged? Book Review Of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast And Slow (2011), Alex Stein
Are People Probabilistically Challenged? Book Review Of Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast And Slow (2011), Alex Stein
Alex Stein
Daniel Kahneman’s recent book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, is a must-read for any scholar and policymaker interested in behavioral economics. Thus far, behavioral economists did predominantly experimental work that uncovered discrete manifestations of people’s bounded rationality: representativeness, availability, anchoring, overoptimism, base-rate neglect, hindsight bias, loss aversion, and other misevaluations of probability and utility. This work has developed no causal explanations for these misevaluations. Kahneman’s book takes the discipline to a different level by developing an integrated theory of bounded rationality’s causes and characteristics. This theory holds that humans use two distinct modes of reasoning, intuitive (System 1) and deliberative (System …
Evidence, Probability, And The Burden Of Proof, Ronald J. Allen, Alex Stein
Evidence, Probability, And The Burden Of Proof, Ronald J. Allen, Alex Stein
Alex Stein
This Article analyzes the probabilistic and epistemological underpinnings of the burden-of-proof doctrine. We show that this doctrine is best understood as instructing factfinders to determine which of the parties’ conflicting stories makes most sense in terms of coherence, consilience, causality, and evidential coverage. By applying this method, factfinders should try—and will often succeed—to establish the truth, rather than a statistical surrogate of the truth, while securing the appropriate allocation of the risk of error. Descriptively, we argue that this understanding of the doctrine—the “relative plausibility theory”—corresponds to our courts’ practice. Prescriptively, we argue that the relative-plausibility method is operationally superior …
What's Good In Theory May Be Flawed In Practice: Potential Legal Consequences Of Poor Implementation Of A Theoretical Sample, Melanie S. Williams, A. Lynn Phillips, G. Michael Phillips
What's Good In Theory May Be Flawed In Practice: Potential Legal Consequences Of Poor Implementation Of A Theoretical Sample, Melanie S. Williams, A. Lynn Phillips, G. Michael Phillips
Melanie S. Williams
The article discusses the problem of the use in litigation of statistical sampling. Sample-based research is increasingly used in cases as diverse as products liability, antitrust, intellectual property, and criminal law, among others. Sample-based research provides objective evidence upon which decisions, damages and liability may rest. Despite its importance, however, statistical evidence is often misused and misunderstood by attorneys who may be unfamiliar with the underlying form of analysis. The paper explores common errors when using litigative samples, comments upon best practices for the use in law of sample-based research, and demonstrates the importance of sound statistical sampling and data …
The “Ensuing Loss” Clause In Insurance Policies: The Forgotten And Misunderstood Antidote To Anti-Concurrent Causation Exclusions, Chris French
Christopher C. French
As a result of the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco which destroyed the city, a clause known as the “ensuing loss” clause was created to address concurrent causation situations in which a loss follows both a covered peril and an excluded peril. Ensuing loss clauses appear in the exclusions section of such policies and in essence they provide that coverage for a loss caused by an excluded peril is nonetheless covered if the loss “ensues” from a covered peril. Today, ensuing loss clauses are found in “all risk” property and homeowners policies, which cover all losses except for …