Law Commons^™

What Makes Lawyers Happy? A Data-Driven Prescription To Redefine Professional Success, Lawrence S. Krieger, Kennon M. Sheldon

Scholarly Publications

This is the first theory-guided empirical research seeking to identify the correlates and contributors to the well-being and life satisfaction of lawyers. Data from several thousand lawyers in four states provide insights about diverse factors from law school and one’s legal career and personal life. Striking patterns appear repeatedly in the data and raise serious questions about the common priorities on law school campuses and among lawyers. External factors, which are often given the most attention and concern among law students and lawyers (factors oriented towards money and status—such as earnings, partnership in a law firm, law school debt, class …

The Truth-Justice Tradeoff: Perceptions Of Decisional Accuracy And Procedural Justice In Adversarial And Inquisitorial Legal Systems, Justin Sevier

Scholarly Publications

Two studies provide empirical support for Thibaut and Walker’s (1978) theory that inquisitorial and adversarial dispute resolution systems are associated with different psychological values: the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of justice. Study 1 suggests that, in civil and criminal disputes, the adversarial system is perceived to produce less truth than it does justice, and less truth than does the inquisitorial system. Conversely, the inquisitorial system is perceived to produce less justice than it does truth, and less justice than does the adversarial system. Study 2 examines how legal outcomes moderate litigants’ perceptions of the truth and justice produced …

How Do The Courts Create Popular Legitmacy?: The Role Of Establishing The Truth, Punishing Justly, And/Or Acting Through Just Procedures, Justin Sevier, Tom R. Tyler

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Hidden Structure Of Fact-Finding, Emily Spottswood

Scholarly Publications

This Article offers a new account of legal fact-finding based on the dual-process framework in cognitive psychology. This line of research suggests that our brains possess two radically different ways of thinking. “System 1” cognition is unconscious, fast, and associative, while “System 2” involves effortful, conscious reasoning. Drawing on these insights, I describe the ways that unconscious processing and conscious reflection interact when jurors hear and decide cases. Most existing evidential models offer useful insights about the ways that juries use relevant information in deciding cases but fail to account for situations in which their decisions are likely to be …

Omission Suspicion: Juries, Hearsay, And Attorneys’ Strategic Choices, Justin Sevier

Scholarly Publications

Attorneys understand that presenting evidence consists of a series of strategic choices. Yet legal scholars have not studied whether jurors are sensitive to the trial strategy that underlies those choices. Do jurors question why an attorney has omitted what jurors consider the “best” evidence of some trial fact and has instead put forth weaker evidence? Do they attempt to understand the motivation behind that choice, and does that affect their legal judgments?

Six original experiments explore these questions in the context of hearsay evidence. The experiments reveal a ubiquitous finding: Jurors carefully scrutinize a party’s strategy for presenting hearsay, and …

What Has Love Got To Do With It?: Sentimental Attachments And Legal Decision-Making, David Markell, Tom Tyler, Sarah F. Brosnan

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Most Ethical Of People, The Least Ethical Of People: Proposing Self-Determination Theory To Measure Professional Character Formation, Lawrence S. Krieger

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

The Unintended Consequences Of Local Rules, Justin Sevier

Scholarly Publications

Many legal rules are based on hunches about human behavior that have not been tested empirically. A behavioral analysis of these rules can illuminate whether they work as policy makers intended or whether they have unforeseen, systematically negative effects. Behavioral analyses of legal rules, unfortunately, are in short supply. This is particularly true with respect to local procedural rules that govern the everyday operation of trials and are left to the discretion of trial courts.

This Article begins to fill that gap by empirically examining one of these local procedural rules: the one allowing jurors to take notes during trial. …

Taking Inventory: The Science Of Happiness, Lawrence S. Krieger

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Psychological Insights: Why Our Students And Graduates Suffer, And What We Might Do About It, Lawrence S. Krieger

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.