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Full-Text Articles in Law
Telling Tales In Court: Trial Procedure And The Story Model, Richard O. Lempert
Telling Tales In Court: Trial Procedure And The Story Model, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
There are three ways in which stories may figure prominently at trials. First, litigants may tell stories to jurors. Not only is there some social science evidence that this happens, but trial lawyers have an instinctive sense that this is what they do. Ask a litigator to describe a current case and she is likely to reply, "Our story is ... " Second, jurors may try to make sense of the evidence they receive by fitting it to some story pattern. If so, the process is likely to feed back on itself. That is, jurors are likely to build a …
Judicial Misconduct During Jury Deliberations, Bennett L. Gershman
Judicial Misconduct During Jury Deliberations, Bennett L. Gershman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The author considers the two principal types of improper judicial behavior that may occur during the jury deliberation process. Judicial conduct that attempts to place undue pressure on a jury to reach a verdict may include verdict-urging instructions, threats and intimidation, and inquiry into the numerical division of the jury on the merits of the verdict. Judicial participation in private, ex parte communications with jurors may also subvert orderly trial procedure and undermine the impartiality of the jury. Neither kind of judicial conduct may be allowed to compel a verdict from a jury.
Selecting Impartial Juries: Must Ignorance Be A Virtue In Our Search For Justice -- Welcome And Statement Of The Issue, Fred H. Cate, Newton N. Minow
Selecting Impartial Juries: Must Ignorance Be A Virtue In Our Search For Justice -- Welcome And Statement Of The Issue, Fred H. Cate, Newton N. Minow
Articles by Maurer Faculty
No abstract provided.
Expert Evidence, Samuel R. Gross
Expert Evidence, Samuel R. Gross
Articles
It seems that the use of expert witnesses in common law courts has always been troublesome. In his Treatise on the Law of Evidence, first published in 1848, Judge John Pitt Taylor describes several classes of witnesses whose testimony should be viewed with caution, including: enslaved people (which accounts for "the lamentable neglect of truth, which is evinced by most of the nations of India, by the subjects of the Czar, and by many of the peasantry in Ireland"); women (because they are more susceptible to "an innate vain love of the marvelous"); and "foreigners and others ... living out …
To Tell What We Know Or Wait For Godot?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
To Tell What We Know Or Wait For Godot?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Articles
Professor Elliott raises two questions about the American Psychological Association's practice of submitting amicus briefs to the courts. First, are our data sufficiently valid, consistent, and generalizable to be applicable to the real world issues? Second, are amicus briefs adequate to communicate scientific findings? The first of these is not a general question, but must be addressed anew each time the Association considers a new issue. An evaluation of the quality and sufficiency of scientific knowledge about racial discrimination, for example, tells us nothing at all about the quality and sufficiency of scientific knowledge about sexual abuse. "Are the data …