Law Commons^™

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same: A Comparison Of Medical Malpractice Trials In North Carolina And Virginia, 2000-2010i, Ralph Peeples, Catherine Harris

Ralph Peeples

The paper begins with an abstract. Please see the manuscript.

Getting Away With Murder (Most Of The Time): A Sesquicentennial Analysis Of Civil War Era Homicide Cases In Boone County, Missouri, Frank O. Bowman Iii

Frank O. Bowman III

In the quarter century centered on the Civil War, 1850-1875, fifty-three homicide cases came before the courts of Boone County, Missouri, of which Columbia, home of the University of Missouri, is the county seat. To remarkable degree, the story of these killings, told in this article, is a chronicle of the place and period.

The article’s method might be described as “murder as social history.” Its narrative thread is an effort to explain the remarkable fact that only twelve of the fifty-three defendants charged with murder were ever convicted of any form of criminal homicide. The explanation requires an introduction …

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same: A Comparison Of Medical Malpractice Trials In Virginia And North Carolina, Ralph Peeples, Catherine Harris

Ralph Peeples

This paper examines ten years (2001-2010) of medical malpractice trials conducted in Virginia and North Carolina. Tort law is quite similar in these two states, except that Virginia law imposes a "hard cap" on damages in medical malpractice cases. North Carolina does not. The primary source of our data are closed insurance records made available by an insurance company that provides malpractice coverage for physicians in both states. We are thus able to report on a number of attributes of these trials, including demographic data, injury severity, outcome at trial, physician specialty, medical allegations, and insurer assessment of the cases.Much …

The Managerial Judge Goes To Trial, Elizabeth Thornburg

Beth Thornburg

Scholars have examined the phenomenon of pre-trial judicial management, but have ignored the ways in which this problematic set of attitudes has invaded the trial phase of litigation. This article examines the use of managerial discretion at the trial stage and demonstrates that trial-phase managerial decisions suffer from all the problems of their pre-trial counterparts: 1) trial management involves judges so intimately in the parties’ information and strategies that it may compromise the judges’ impartiality; 2) it leads to a loss of transparency as more decisions are made off the record or in chambers; 3) management decisions are not guided …

Teaching The “Portraits, Mosaics And Themes” Of The Federal Rules Of Evidence, Lee D. Schinasi

Lee D. Schinasi

Teaching the “Portraits, Mosaics and Themes” of The Federal Rules of Evidence: This article discusses an approach to teaching, learning, and applying the Federal Rules of Evidence – the “portraits and mosaics regime.” It is designed to accomplish four things: First, for professors new to teaching evidence, the “portraits and mosaics regime” is a macro level introductory overview of the statute and is aimed at providing perspective and insight. It introduces the statutes’s most significant concepts, how they interrelate, and how they can be applied. Second, it can be used as a teaching outline for new evidence professors approaching their …

A History Of Representations Of Justice: Coincident Preoccupations Of Law And Film, Jessica M. Silbey

Jessica Silbey

The American trial and the art of cinema share certain epistemological tendencies. Both stake claims to an authoritative form of knowledge based on the indubitable quality of observable phenomena. Both are preoccupied (sometimes to the point of self-defeat) with sustaining the authority that underlies the knowledge produced by visual perception. The American trial and art of cinema also increasingly share cultural space. Although the trial film (otherwise known as the courtroom drama) is as old as the medium of film the recent spate of popular trial films, be they fictional such as Runaway Jury or documentary such as Capturing the …