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Full-Text Articles in Law and Society
Decisionmaking About General Damages: A Comparison Of Jurors, Judges, And Lawyers, Roselle L. Wissler, Allen J. Hart, Michael J. Saks
Decisionmaking About General Damages: A Comparison Of Jurors, Judges, And Lawyers, Roselle L. Wissler, Allen J. Hart, Michael J. Saks
Michigan Law Review
Placing important decisions in the hands of the civil jury - made up of ordinary citizens untrained in the law - has long been criticized. For example, Erwin Griswold, law school dean and Solicitor General of the United States, asked, "Why should anyone think that 12 persons brought in from the street, selected in various ways, for their lack of general ability, should have any special capacity for deciding controversies between persons?" And Jerome Frank, law professor, aggressive legal realist, and judge, argued that juries are uncertain, capricious, and unpredictable, ignorant and prejudiced, poor factfinders, gullible, and incapable of following …
The Courage Of Our Convictions, Sherman J. Clark
The Courage Of Our Convictions, Sherman J. Clark
Michigan Law Review
This article argues that criminal trial juries perform an important but inadequately appreciated social function. I suggest that jury trials serve as a means through which we as a community take responsibility for - own up to - inherently problematic judgments regarding the blameworthiness or culpability of our fellow citizens. This is distinct from saying that jury trials are a method of making judgments about culpability. They are that; but they are also a means through which we confront our own agency in those judgments. The jury is an institution through which we as individuals take a turn acknowledging and …