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Full-Text Articles in Law

The Right To Trial By Jury Shall Remain Inviolate: Jury Trials In Civil Actions In Georgia’S Courts, David E. Shipley Jan 2024

The Right To Trial By Jury Shall Remain Inviolate: Jury Trials In Civil Actions In Georgia’S Courts, David E. Shipley

Scholarly Works

Trials, though rare, “shape almost every aspect of procedure,” and the jury trial is a distinctive feature of civil litigation in the United States. The Seventh Amendment of the U.S. Constitution ‘preserves’ the right to jury trial “[i]n suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars.” Even though this amendment does not apply to the states, courts in the states “honor the right to the extent it is created in their constitutions or local statutes.”

The Georgia Constitution provides that “[t]he right to trial by jury shall remain inviolate,” and Georgia’s appellate courts have shown …


Barrock Lecture: Democracy In The Criminal Justice System: An Assessment, Carissa Byrne Hessick Sep 2023

Barrock Lecture: Democracy In The Criminal Justice System: An Assessment, Carissa Byrne Hessick

Marquette Law Review

None.


Law School News: Joyce And Bill Cummings Of Cummings Foundation To Deliver Keynote Address At Rwu Commencement 4-20-2023, Jill Rodrigues Apr 2023

Law School News: Joyce And Bill Cummings Of Cummings Foundation To Deliver Keynote Address At Rwu Commencement 4-20-2023, Jill Rodrigues

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Jury-Related Errors In Copyright, Zahr K. Said Apr 2023

Jury-Related Errors In Copyright, Zahr K. Said

Indiana Law Journal

Copyright law is surprisingly hard. Copyright does not do what laypeople think it does, nor do its terms mean what laypeople expect. Copyright also possesses systemic indeterminacy about what it protects and the extent of that protection. For laypeople, copyright law is decidedly “user-unfriendly.” Nonetheless, copyright law reserves for lay jurors its most-litigated, most difficult, and most consequential question at trial: whether works are “substantially similar” and thus infringing. Many have criticized this allocation because in the context of copyright law, juries effectively have the power to expand or contract owners’ rights with little oversight or correction. But blaming the …


Differentiating Strict Products Liability’S Cost-Benefit Analysis From Negligence, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald J. Coleman Apr 2023

Differentiating Strict Products Liability’S Cost-Benefit Analysis From Negligence, Paul F. Rothstein, Ronald J. Coleman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Dangerous products may give rise to colossal liability for commercial actors. Indeed, in 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Johnson & Johnson v. Ingham, permitting a more than two billion dollar products liability damages award to stand. In his dissenting opinion in another recent products liability case, Air and Liquid Systems Corp. v. DeVries, Justice Gorsuch declared that “[t]ort law is supposed to be about aligning liability with responsibility.” However, in the products liability context, there have been ongoing debates concerning how best to set legal rules and standards on tort liability. Are general principles of …


Law School News: Rwu Law Names Judge Brian Stern As Chair Of Board Of Directors, Jill Rodrigues Feb 2023

Law School News: Rwu Law Names Judge Brian Stern As Chair Of Board Of Directors, Jill Rodrigues

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


The Incongruence Principle Of Evidence, Hillel Bavli Jan 2023

The Incongruence Principle Of Evidence, Hillel Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Evidence law assumes that the meaning and value of information at trial is equal to the meaning and value of the same information in the real world. This premise underlies evidence policy, judicial applications of evidence law, and instructions to jurors for evaluating evidence. However, it is incorrect, and the law’s failure to recognize this hinders its aims of accuracy and equality.

In this article, I draw on fields outside of law - including Bayesian inference and cognitive psychology - to develop a model of evidence that describes how jurors combine new evidence with prior beliefs (or “priors”) to make …


Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, Anthony Godwin Jan 2023

Army Commander’S Role—The Judge, Jury, & Prosecutor For The Article 15, Anthony Godwin

Seattle University Law Review

Service members in the armed forces are bound by a different set of rules when compared to other U.S. citizens. Some of the normal safeguards and protections that civilians enjoy are much more restrictive for military service members, and this is generally for a good reason. Such restrictions are partly due to the complex demands and needs of the United States military. Congress and the President have entrusted military commanders with special powers that enable them to handle minor violations of law without needing to go through a full judicial proceeding. Non-judicial punishments (NJP), also known as Article 15s, are …


Exploring Jury Nullification: Its Political History, Current, And Potential Impact On Policy, David Harold Penny Jan 2023

Exploring Jury Nullification: Its Political History, Current, And Potential Impact On Policy, David Harold Penny

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Jury nullification (JN) is when a jury knows a defendant is legally guilty, but states they are not guilty, believing that their verdict better serves justice in that case. The problem is the violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause for all citizens, caused by the intentional omission in most judges’ instructions to juries of JN. The purpose of the study was to fill the gap in the literature on jury behavior and address the problem of JN. The study framework is chaos theory as applied by Horowitz to jury behavior. It describes judges and lawmakers mistrust of juries associated …


Exploring Jury Nullification: Its Political History, Current, And Potential Impact On Policy, David Harold Penny Jan 2023

Exploring Jury Nullification: Its Political History, Current, And Potential Impact On Policy, David Harold Penny

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Jury nullification (JN) is when a jury knows a defendant is legally guilty, but states they are not guilty, believing that their verdict better serves justice in that case. The problem is the violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause for all citizens, caused by the intentional omission in most judges’ instructions to juries of JN. The purpose of the study was to fill the gap in the literature on jury behavior and address the problem of JN. The study framework is chaos theory as applied by Horowitz to jury behavior. It describes judges and lawmakers mistrust of juries associated …


Ramos Retroactivity And The False Promise Of Teague V. Lane, Tori Simkovic Jun 2022

Ramos Retroactivity And The False Promise Of Teague V. Lane, Tori Simkovic

University of Miami Law Review

When the Supreme Court changes course and announces a new rule of constitutional criminal law, the question remains: what happens to those imprisoned by the old practice now deemed unconstitutional? Since 1989, that question has been answered by Teague v. Lane, a restrictive holding that limits retroactivity by prioritizing judicial resources over the constitutional rights of incarcerated people. But should it matter if the old rule has explicitly racist origins?
Convictions by non-unanimous juries emerged in Louisiana and Oregon with the stated intention of rendering Black jurors' votes meaningless. In 2020, the Supreme Court in Ramos v. Louisiana held that …


The Best Of Both Worlds: Reconciling Tradition With Evolution Under The Ohio And Federal Right To A Civil Jury Trial, Jacob Hoback Mar 2022

The Best Of Both Worlds: Reconciling Tradition With Evolution Under The Ohio And Federal Right To A Civil Jury Trial, Jacob Hoback

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.


Jury Nullification As A Spectrum, Richard Lorren Jolly Mar 2022

Jury Nullification As A Spectrum, Richard Lorren Jolly

Pepperdine Law Review

Jury nullification traditionally refers to the jury’s power to deliver a verdict that is deliberately contrary to the law’s clearly dictated outcome. A spirited scholarship is built around this conception, with some painting nullification as democratic and others as anarchic. But this debate is largely unmoored from experience. In practice, courts have formally eliminated the jury’s authority to review the law and have established procedures that make it easier to prevent and overturn seemingly nullificatory verdicts. Thus, outside of a jury’s verdict acquitting a criminal defendant, jury nullification as traditionally understood does not exist. In no other context is a …


Juries, Democracy, And Petty Crime, John D. King Jan 2022

Juries, Democracy, And Petty Crime, John D. King

Scholarly Articles

The right to trial by jury in criminal cases is basic to the design of American criminal justice and to the structure of American government. Guaranteed by Article III of the Constitution, the Sixth Amendment, and every one of the original state constitutions, the criminal jury was seen as critically important not only to the protection of individual rights but also to the architecture of American democracy. The vast majority of criminal prosecutions today, however, are resolved without even the prospect of community review by a jury. Despite the textual clarity of the guarantee, the Supreme Court has long recognized …


Robert Cover’S Love Of Stories: A Rumination On His Wanting To Discuss The Brothers Karamazov With Me Across Five Conversations During The Last Five Years Of His Life, With An Application To The Chauvin Murder Trial Of 2021, Richard H. Weisberg Jan 2022

Robert Cover’S Love Of Stories: A Rumination On His Wanting To Discuss The Brothers Karamazov With Me Across Five Conversations During The Last Five Years Of His Life, With An Application To The Chauvin Murder Trial Of 2021, Richard H. Weisberg

Touro Law Review

The field of Law and Literature, perhaps more than any other area of legal studies, has been touched deeply by Robert Cover’s life and work. My interactions with Bob over the last half dozen years of his tragically short life provide an insight, recounted in a somewhat personal vein here, into his profound engagement with stories, with the most enduring part of that revitalized inter-discipline. I specify and illustrate five conversations I had with him during conferences, family interactions, or long New Haven walks beginning in 1981 and ending the day before his untimely death in the Summer of …


Equity, Law And The Seventh Amendment, Samuel Bray Jan 2022

Equity, Law And The Seventh Amendment, Samuel Bray

Journal Articles

The Seventh Amendment requires that the civil jury trial right be “preserved” in “Suits at common law.” Those bits of constitutional text have long set the justices on a path of historical reconstruction. For roughly two centuries, the Supreme Court has determined the scope of the civil jury trial right in federal court by reference to historic English courts. But no one is happy with the current test. In one widely used variant, it requires an inquiry into analogous 1791 actions, followed by an inquiry into the legal or equitable provenance of the remedy sought, and then a weighing that …


The Jury Trial Reinvented, Christopher Robertson, Michael Shammas Oct 2021

The Jury Trial Reinvented, Christopher Robertson, Michael Shammas

Faculty Scholarship

The Framers of the Sixth and Seventh Amendments to the United States Constitution recognized that jury trials were essential for maintaining democratic legitimacy and avoiding epistemic crises. As an institution, the jury trial is purpose-built to engage citizens in the process of deliberative, participatory democracy with ground rules. The jury trial provides a carefully constructed setting aimed at sorting truth from falsehood.

Despite its value, the jury trial has been under assault for decades. Concededly, jury trials can sometimes be inefficient, unreliable, unpredictable, and impractical. The COVID–19 pandemic rendered most physical jury trials unworkable but spurred some courts to begin …


The Continuing And Unlawful Exclusion Of Qualified Ex-Offenders From Jury Service In Ohio, Jordan Berman Jul 2021

The Continuing And Unlawful Exclusion Of Qualified Ex-Offenders From Jury Service In Ohio, Jordan Berman

Akron Law Review

Whether an Ohioan with a felony conviction can be considered for jury service may well depend on where he or she lives in the state or the judge presiding at trial, rather than the dictates of Ohio law. By statute, Ohio permits those with felony convictions to serve on juries upon the completion of any parole or community control sanctions that may have been imposed. This article is not concerned with this settled law but rather the dramatic unevenness of its implementation, as Ohio courts of common pleas, and even individual judges, vary widely in whether they abide by or …


Plea Bargaining For The People, Daniel S. Mcconkie Jr. Jun 2021

Plea Bargaining For The People, Daniel S. Mcconkie Jr.

College of Law Faculty Publications

Our criminal justice system must be democratic enough to allow for significant citizen participation. Unfortunately, our current system cuts the people out. Instead of juries, plea bargaining professionals like prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges decide most cases. Plea bargaining does efficiently process cases but, in addition to its well-known coercive aspects that warp case outcomes, ignores what I call “criminal justice citizenship.” This refers to the people’s privilege to participate on an equal basis in the criminal justice system. That participation strengthens our democracy, shores up the legitimacy of the system, and helps to ensure that the system, within constitutional …


Benevolent Exclusion, Anna Offit Jun 2021

Benevolent Exclusion, Anna Offit

Washington Law Review

The American jury system holds the promise of bringing common sense ideas about justice to the enforcement of the law. But its democratizing effect cannot be realized if a segment of the population faces systematic exclusion based on income or wealth. The problem of unequal access to jury service based on socio-economic disparities is a longstanding yet under-studied problem—and one which the uneven fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated. Like race- and sex-based jury discrimination during the peremptory challenge phase of jury selection, the routine dismissal of citizens who face economic hardship excludes not only people but also the …


Are We Giving Them A Fair Chance? Racial Stereotypes And The Juvenile Justice System, Cali Bloem May 2021

Are We Giving Them A Fair Chance? Racial Stereotypes And The Juvenile Justice System, Cali Bloem

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Prior research indicates that there are racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system, including the juvenile justice system, and that decision-makers may use stereotypes when determining guilt and deciding on sentences for juveniles. We used a mock juror study design in which participants were randomly assigned to read one of four trial summaries of an assault committed by either a White juvenile or Latinx juvenile, with the victim being a White juvenile or Latinx juvenile. The participants were asked to provide a verdict and sentencing decision and explain why they chose the sentence that they did. They were also tasked …


From The Frontlines Of The Modern Movement To End Forced Arbitration And Restore Jury Rights, F. Paul Bland, Myriam Gilles, Tanuja Gupta Apr 2021

From The Frontlines Of The Modern Movement To End Forced Arbitration And Restore Jury Rights, F. Paul Bland, Myriam Gilles, Tanuja Gupta

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.


Introduction To Reviving The American Jury, Nancy S. Marder Apr 2021

Introduction To Reviving The American Jury, Nancy S. Marder

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.


How To Talk So Juries Will Listen, Janet Randall Apr 2021

How To Talk So Juries Will Listen, Janet Randall

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.


Bye, Bye, Bilinguals: The Removal Of English- Spanish Bilinguals From The Criminal Jury And Latino Discrimination, Ashley Rich Apr 2021

Bye, Bye, Bilinguals: The Removal Of English- Spanish Bilinguals From The Criminal Jury And Latino Discrimination, Ashley Rich

Chicago-Kent Law Review

No abstract provided.


“We” The Jury: The Problem Of Peremptory Strikes As Illustrated By Flowers V. Mississippi, Kayley A. Viteo Apr 2021

“We” The Jury: The Problem Of Peremptory Strikes As Illustrated By Flowers V. Mississippi, Kayley A. Viteo

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.


Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable Apr 2021

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law 04-2021, Michael M. Bowden, Barry Bridges, Political Roundtable

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.


Laypeople As Learners: Applying Educational Principles To Improve Juror Comprehension Of Instructions, Max Rogers Jan 2021

Laypeople As Learners: Applying Educational Principles To Improve Juror Comprehension Of Instructions, Max Rogers

Northwestern University Law Review

The U.S. Constitution enshrines the jury in a sacred space within the American judicial system. Yet there are troubling signs that, notwithstanding their best efforts, jurors struggle to fulfill their duties. In particular, substantial empirical research indicates that jurors struggle to understand and, consequently, to apply the instructions given to them by the judge just prior to deliberations. Various mechanisms have been proposed— and in some cases adopted—to improve jurors’ comprehension of instructions and the quality of the deliberations that follow. Among these are rewriting jury instructions in “plain English,” permitting jurors to take notes and ask questions of witnesses, …


Age Diversity, Alexander Boni-Saenz Jan 2021

Age Diversity, Alexander Boni-Saenz

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article is the first to examine age diversity in the legal literature, mapping out its descriptive, normative, and legal dimensions. Age diversity is a plural concept, as heterogeneity of age can take many forms in various human institutions. Likewise, the normative rationales for these assorted age diversities are rooted in distinct theoretical foundations, making the case for or against age diversity contextual rather than universal. A host of legal rules play a significant role in regulating age diversity, influencing the presence of different generations in the workplace, judiciary, and Congress. Better understanding the nature and consequences of age diversity …


Beyond A Reasonable Doubt: Juries Don’T Get It, Hon. James A. Shapiro, Karl T. Muth Jan 2021

Beyond A Reasonable Doubt: Juries Don’T Get It, Hon. James A. Shapiro, Karl T. Muth

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

Proof beyond a reasonable doubt has been de rigueur in criminal cases almost since the dawn of the republic. It is based on the premise that it is better to let several guilty people go free in order to save one innocent person from wrongful conviction. The jury in a criminal case is not merely an audience. It is the central mechanism without which the wheels of American criminal justice cannot turn-- and operates as the final safeguard against a grave error. However, while the Constitution describes the importance, composition, and role of the jury, it does not explicitly …