Law Commons^™

Chapters Of The Civil Jury, Doug R. Rendleman

Doug Rendleman

The civil jury, though constitutionally protected by the seventh amendment, has remained a controversial institution throughout much of Anglo-American legal history. Our romantic ideals are questioned by critics who view the civil jury as prejudiced and unpredictable; proponents note the sense of fairness and "earthy wisdom" gained by community participation in the legal process. This debate surfaces in the process of accommodation between certain substantive goals of the law and the pre-verdict and post-verdict procedural devices courts have employed to control the jury. In this article, Professor Rendleman examines this conflict in his three "chapters" involving racially motivated discharges of …

Irreconcilable Differences: Yet More Attitudinal Discrepancies Between Death Penalty Opponents And Proponents: A California Sample, Robert J. Robinson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Political Puzzle Of The Civil Jury, Jason M. Solomon

Faculty Publications

At the root of many contemporary debates over the civil justice or tort system—debates over punitive damages, preemption, and tort reform more broadly—are underlying questions about the justification for the civil jury. The United States is the only country that still uses a jury in civil cases, and most civil jury trials are tort trials. The jury has more power to decide questions of law in tort than in any other area of law, so any serious discussion of tort law must have the civil jury at its center.

The debate over the jury—in both the academic literature and the …

Juries, The Law, And The Original Function Of The Full Faith And Credit Clause, Hugo D. Leith

Hugo D Leith

No abstract provided.

Special Feature: The Future Of Lay Adjudication In Korea And Japan, Hiroshi Fukurai, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Three years after Korea introduced the jury system for the first time in its history, and two years following the Japanese introduction of a mixed court in which citizen and professional judges decide serious criminal cases, the Second East Asian Law and Society Conference was held on September 30th and October 1st, 2011 in the vibrant city of Seoul, South Korea. This Special Issue of the Yonsei Law Journal offers an opportunity to present work on some of the key issues that were discussed and debated at this remarkable conference. In particular, the special issue offers new research on the …

Taking A Stand On Taking The Stand: The Effect Of A Prior Criminal Record On The Decision To Testify And On Trial Outcomes, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans

Valerie P. Hans

This article uses unique data from over 300 criminal trials in four large counties to study the relations between the existence of a prior criminal record and defendants testifying at trial, between testifying at trial and juries' learning about a criminal record, and between juries' learning about a criminal record and their decisions to convict or acquit. Sixty percent of defendants without criminal records testified compared to 45 percent with criminal records. For testifying defendants with criminal records, juries learned of those records in about half the cases. Juries rarely learned about criminal records unless defendants testified. After controlling for …

The Predictability Of Juries, Valerie P. Hans, Theodore Eisenberg

Valerie P. Hans

This article discusses the meaning of jury “predictability” and whether jury research supports claims of unpredictability. It then analyzes the factors that are associated with perceptions of civil jury unpredictability using data from (1) surveys of corporate and insurance attorneys’ views of the civil justice system, and (2) the outcomes of civil jury trials in state courts. Perceptions of punitive damages dominate business and insurance industry attorneys’ jury predictability ratings. Punitive damages data are significantly and strongly related to attorneys’ judgments about jury predictability across states. This strong association occurs despite evidence of infrequent punitive damage award requests and less …

Science In The Jury Box: Jurors' Views And Understanding Of Mitochondrial Dna Evidence, Valerie P. Hans, David H. Kaye, B. Michael Dann, Erin J. Farley, Stephanie Albertson

Valerie P. Hans

This article describes parts of an unusually realistic experiment on the comprehension of expert testimony on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequencing in a criminal trial for robbery. Specifically, we examine how jurors who responded to summonses for jury duty evaluated portions of videotaped testimony involving probabilities and statistics. Although some jurors showed susceptibility to classic fallacies in interpreting conditional probabilities, the jurors as a whole were not overwhelmed by a 99.98% exclusion probability that the prosecution presented. Cognitive errors favoring the defense were more prevalent than ones favoring the prosecution. These findings lend scant support to the legal argument that mtDNA …

The Relation Between Punitive And Compensatory Awards: Combining Extreme Data With The Mass Of Awards, Theodore Eisenberg, Valerie P. Hans, Martin T. Wells

Valerie P. Hans

This article assesses the relation between punitive and compensatory damages by combining two data sets of extreme awards with state court data from the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) for 1992, 1996, and 2001. One data set of extreme awards consists of punitive damages awards in excess of $100 million from 1985 through 2003, gathered by Hersch and Viscusi (H-V); the other includes the National Law Journal's (NLJ) annual reports of the 100 largest trial verdicts from 2001 to 2004. The integration of these data sets provides the most comprehensive picture of punitive damages in American civil trials to …

The Twenty-First Century Jury: Worst Of Times Or Best Of Times?, Valerie P. Hans

Valerie P. Hans

In thinking about legal developments, new research findings, and the continuing swirl of controversy over this venerable American institution, I observe the same paradoxical condition that Charles Dickens found in 18th Century London: "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." There is evidence of both the expansion of jury trial rights, yet contraction of jury trials. Research evidence indicates that juries perform well, yet the 21st Century jury confronts more complex decision making tasks and continuing doubts about its fairness and competence.

Finding The Original Meaning Of American Criminal Procedure Rights: Lessons From Reasonable Doubt’S Development, Randolph N. Jonakait

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “The prosecution must prove every element of the crime beyond a reasonable doubt for a valid conviction. The Constitution nowhere explicitly contains this requirement, but the Supreme Court in In re Winship1 stated that due process commands it. Justice Brennan, writing for the Court, noted that the Court had often assumed that the standard existed, that it played a central role in American criminal justice by lessening the chances of mistaken convictions, and that it was essential for instilling community respect in criminal enforcement. The reasonable doubt standard is fundamental because it makes guilty verdicts more difficult. As Winship …

Party's Over: Admissibility Of Post-Trial Juror Testimony Should Depend On The Nature Of The Conduct, Justin Gillett

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

What do you call a weeklong period in which you and a handful of acquaintances drink alcohol every day at lunch, sleep though the afternoons, smoke marijuana and ingest a couple lines of cocaine on occasion? You call it the time when a jury convicted Anthony Tanner and William Conover of conspiracy to defraud the United States and commit various acts of mail fraud. Under a current rule of evidence, which precludes juror testimony to impeach a verdict except on extraneous prejudicial information, juror intoxication is not an external influence about which jurors may testify. A new test for the …

Jury Nullification In Modified Comparative Negligence Regimes, Eli K. Best, John J. Donohue

John Donohue

This Article analyzes jury findings from nearly one thousand negligence suits to determine whether juries in modified comparative negligence jurisdictions apportion percentages of negligence differently than juries in pure comparative negligence jurisdictions. We find that juries in modified comparative negligence jurisdictions are substantially less likely to find that a plaintiff was more than 50 percent negligent. This evidence of jury manipulation strengthens the case for pure comparative negligence, which we argue is already superior on theoretical and policy grounds.

Criminal Child Neglect And The "Free Range Kid": Is Overprotective Parenting The New Standard Of Care?, David Pimentel

David Pimentel

In the last generation, American parenting norms have shifted strongly in favor of Intensive Parenting, placing particular emphasis on protecting children from risks of harm. Recently, a backlash to this trend has emerged. “Free Range” parenting is based on the concern that coddling children through overprotection inhibits the development of their independence and responsibility. Indeed, a growing body of literature suggests that parental overreaction to remote and even illusory risks of physical harm is exposing children to far more serious risks to their well-being and development. But the powerful influence of media has sensationalized the risks to children, skewing popular …

Coming To Terms With The Uniform Probate Code's Reformation Of Wills, Wayne M. Gazur

Publications

No abstract provided.

"Bad Juror" Lists And The Prosecutor's Duty To Disclose, Ira Robbins

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Prosecutors sometimes use what are known as "bad juror" lists to exclude particular citizens from jury service. Not only does this practice interfere with an open and fair jury-selection process, thus implicating a defendant's right to be tried by a jury of his or her peers, but it also violates potential jurors' rights to serve in this important capacity. But who is on these lists? And is a prosecutor required to disclose the lists to defense counsel? These questions have largely gone unnoticed by legal analysts. This Article addresses the prosecutor's duty to disclose bad-juror lists. It reviews the federal …

Information Lost And Found, Frederic M. Bloom

Publications

At the core of every lawsuit is a mix of information-revealing documents that chronicle a party's malfeasance, guarded memos that outline a lawyer's trial strategy, fading memories that recall a jury's key mistakes. Yet the law's system for managing that information is still poorly understood. This Article makes new and better sense of that system. It begins with an original examination of five pieces of our civil information architecture--evidence tampering rules, automatic disclosure requirements, work product doctrine, peremptory challenge law, and bans on juror testimony--and compiles a novel study of how those doctrines intersect and overlap. It then fits these …

The Missing Jury: The Neglected Role Of Juries In Eighth Amendment Punishments Clause Determinations, Meghan J. Ryan

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

A recent study of death penalty cases has revealed that judges, who are ordinarily thought of as the guardians of criminal defendants’ constitutional rights, are more likely to impose harsher punishments than jurors. This may be unsettling in its own right, but it is especially concerning because judges are the individuals charged with determining whether punishments are unconstitutionally cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment, and these determinations are supposed to be based on “the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The study suggests that judges are out of step with society’s moral norms, …

"Bad Juror" Lists And The Prosecutor's Duty To Disclose, Ira P. Robbins

Ira P. Robbins