Law Commons^™

On Legal Interpretations Of The Condorcet Jury Theorem, Paul H. Edelman

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

There has been a spate of interest in the application of the Condorcet Jury Theorem to issues in the law. This theorem holds that a majority vote among a suitably large body of voters, all of whom are more likely than not to vote correctly, will almost surely result in the correct outcome. Its uses have ranged from estimating the correct size of juries to justifying the voting of creditors in Chapter 11 reorganizations. While the mathematics is unassailable, the legal interpretation of the conclusion is dependent on the model of probability one uses when invoking the assumption that the …