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Full-Text Articles in Law

Saliency, Anchors & Frames: A Multicomponent Damages Experiment, Bernard Chao Jan 2019

Saliency, Anchors & Frames: A Multicomponent Damages Experiment, Bernard Chao

Michigan Technology Law Review

Modern technology products contain thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, of different features. Nonetheless, when electronics manufacturers are sued for patent infringement, these suits typically accuse only one feature, or in more complex suits, a handful of features, of actual patent infringement. But damages verdicts often do not reflect the relatively small contribution an individual patent makes to an infringing product. One study observed that verdicts in these types of cases average 9.98% of the price of the entire product. While both courts and commentators have blamed the law of patent damages, the role cognitive biases play in these outsized damages …


Standing Alone: Conformity, Coercion, And The Protection Of The Holdout Juror, Jason D. Reichelt May 2007

Standing Alone: Conformity, Coercion, And The Protection Of The Holdout Juror, Jason D. Reichelt

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The holdout juror in felony criminal trials is a product of the near-universal decision rule in federal and state courts of a unanimous verdict. In recent years, courts have increasingly inquired into a jury's deliberations when a holdout juror has been identified amid allegations of misconduct. This Article helps bridge the considerable gap between cognitive psychology and legal scholarship, analyzing the thought processes of the holdout juror through the application of empirical evidence and psychological modeling, to conclude that the improved protection of the holdout juror is a necessary and critical component to the preservation of a defendant's right to …


Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth Jan 2003

Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Book Chapters

Most research that has attempted to predict verdict preferences on the basis of stable juror characteristics, such as attitudes and personality traits, has found that individual differences among jurors are not very useful predictors, accounting for only a small proportion of the variance in verdict choices. Some commentators have therefore concluded that verdicts are overwhelmingly accounted for by "the weight of the evidence," and that differences among jurors have negligible effects. But there is a paradox here: In most cases the weight of the evidence is insufficient to produce firstballot unanimity in the jury (Hans & Vidmar, 1986; Hastie, Penrod, …


The Role Of "Stories" In Civil Jury Judgments, Reid Hastie Dec 1999

The Role Of "Stories" In Civil Jury Judgments, Reid Hastie

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

A brief review of psychological theories of juror decision making is followed by an introduction to "explanation-based" theories of judgment. Prior empirical studies of explanation-based processes in juror decision making are then reviewed. An original empirical study of jurors' judgments concerning liability for punitive damages is presented to illustrate the explanation-based approach to civil decisions.


Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth Jan 1993

Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Book Chapters

Most research that has attempted to predict verdict preferences on the basis of stable juror characteristics, such as attitudes and personality traits, has found that individual differences among jurors are not very useful predictors, accounting for only a small proportion of the variance in verdict choices. Some commentators have therefore concluded that verdicts are overwhelmingly accounted for by "the weight of the evidence," and that differences among jurors have negligible effects. But there is a paradox here: In most cases the weight of the evidence is insufficient to produce firstballot unanimity in the jury (Hans & Vidmar, 1986; Hastie, Penrod, …


Evaluating Michigan's Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict: An Empirical Study, Gare A. Smith, James A. Hall Oct 1982

Evaluating Michigan's Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict: An Empirical Study, Gare A. Smith, James A. Hall

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

Because Michigan's GBMI statute has been in effect for several years, enough data exists to assess the statute's use and practical effect. The purpose of this Project is to evaluate the statute and thus provide guidance for those legislatures considering similar proposals. This Project concludes that the new verdict has completely failed in its intended purpose. Part I describes the statute's history, legislative purpose, and procedural mechanics. Part II analyzes the displacing effect of the GBMI verdict on other verdicts, and sets forth empirical data on the disparate characteristics of defendants who raise the insanity defense and are subsequently found …


The Constitutionality Of Michigan's Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict, John M. Grostic Oct 1978

The Constitutionality Of Michigan's Guilty But Mentally Ill Verdict, John M. Grostic

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This article will assess the constitutionality of the statute providing for a GBMI verdict by examining the likely, impact of this statute on the constitutional rights of legally insane defendants. Part I will briefly outline the relevant provisions of the GBMI statute. Part II will consider whether legally insane defendants have a constitutional right to an insanity defense. Part III will then argue that some defendants, though legally insane at the time they committed allegedly criminal acts, will nevertheless be found GBMI rather than NGRI.


Uncovering "Nondiscernible" Differences: Empirical Research And The Jury-Size Cases, Richard O. Lempert Mar 1975

Uncovering "Nondiscernible" Differences: Empirical Research And The Jury-Size Cases, Richard O. Lempert

Michigan Law Review

My point is not that verdict differences associated with jury size cannot be revealed through careful empirical investigation. Indeed, at several places in this article I will suggest research strategies likely to reveal such differences. Rather, it is that typical strategies of legal-impact research, such as those utilized in the Colgrove real-world studies, are unlikely to uncover differences associated with jury size however well they control for those plausible rival hypotheses that form the usual threats to the validity of impact research. The reason lies in the unamenability of the jury-size problem to the usual techniques of aggregate data analysis.