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Articles 1 - 13 of 13
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The American Jury System: A Synthetic Overview, Richard Lempert
The American Jury System: A Synthetic Overview, Richard Lempert
Chicago-Kent Law Review
This essay is intended to provide in brief compass a review of much that is known about the American jury system, including the jury’s historical origins, its political role, controversies over its role and structure, its performance, both absolutely and in comparison to judges and mixed tribunals, and proposals for improving the jury system. The essay is informed throughout by 50 years of research on the jury system, beginning with the 1965 publication of Kalven and Zeisel’s seminal book, The American Jury. The political importance of the jury is seen to lie more in the jury’s status as a one …
The American Jury System: A Synthetic Overview, Richard O. Lempert
The American Jury System: A Synthetic Overview, Richard O. Lempert
Articles
This essay is intended to provide in brief compass a review of much that is known about the American jury system, including the jury’s historical origins, its political role, controversies over its role and structure, its performance, both absolutely and in comparison to judges and mixed tribunals, and proposals for improving the jury system. The essay is informed throughout by 50 years of research on the jury system, beginning with the 1965 publication of Kalven and Zeisel’s seminal book, The American Jury. The political importance of the jury is seen to lie more in the jury’s status as a one …
Gideon V. Wainwright A Half Century Later, Yale Kamisar
Gideon V. Wainwright A Half Century Later, Yale Kamisar
Reviews
When he was nearing the end of his distinguished career, one of my former law professors observed that a dramatic story of a specific case "has the same advantages that a play or a novel has over a general discussion of ethics or political theory." Ms. Houppert illustrates this point in her very first chapter.
Holmes And The Common Law: A Jury's Duty, Matthew P. Cline
Holmes And The Common Law: A Jury's Duty, Matthew P. Cline
Matthew P Cline
The notion of a small group of peers whose responsibility it is to play a part in determining the outcome of a trial is central to the common conception of the American legal system. Memorialized in the Constitution of the United States as a fundamental right, and in the national consciousness as the proud, if begrudged, duty of all citizens, juries are often discussed, but perhaps not always understood. Whatever misunderstandings have come to be, certainly many of them sprang from the juxtaposition of jury and judge. Why do we have both? How are their responsibilities divided? Who truly decides …
A Theory Of The Perverse Verdict, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo
A Theory Of The Perverse Verdict, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo
Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo
The concept of a perverse verdict is one that pervades the Criminal justice system of nearly all common law jurisdictions. The English Criminal Justice system is no exception and the concept has become institutionalised as if it were a true occurrence. This paper challenges the idea and argues that it is, technically, a legal non-event given the system of trial by jury. The theory is that besides the jury, no one else is invested with the power and authority to declare a verdict and this position is supported both by legal custom and the mechanism of the criminal justice system. …
Jury Deliberations – How Do Reasoning Skills Interplay With Decision-Making?, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo
Jury Deliberations – How Do Reasoning Skills Interplay With Decision-Making?, Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo
Bethel G.A Erastus-Obilo
We may well wonder how the Casey Anthony reached its verdict in spite of what many of us thought was a raft of compelling evidence. In order to understand some of the nuances at play, it is important to understand some of the issues that confront a jury and how the criminal justice system ensures or attempts to ensure a fair outcome in our trial by jury system
The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael D. Mann
The “Csi Effect”: Better Jurors Through Television And Science?, Michael D. Mann
ExpressO
This Comment discusses how television shows such as CSI and Law & Order create heightened juror expectations. This will be published in the Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal's 2005-2006 issue.
The Merger Of Common-Law And Equity Pleading In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson
The Merger Of Common-Law And Equity Pleading In Virginia, William Hamilton Bryson
Law Faculty Publications
This article describes the separation of common law and equity in Virginia leading up to the 2006 merger of common law and equity pleading and the problems that remain to be solved by the courts.
Free-Standing Due Process And Criminal Procedure: The Supreme Court's Search For Interpretive Guidelines, Jerold H. Israel
Free-Standing Due Process And Criminal Procedure: The Supreme Court's Search For Interpretive Guidelines, Jerold H. Israel
Articles
When I was first introduced to the constitutional regulation of criminal procedure in the mid-1950s, a single issue dominated the field: To what extent did the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment impose upon states the same constitutional restraints that the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eighth Amendments imposed upon the federal government? While those Bill of Rights provisions, as even then construed, imposed a broad range of constitutional restraints upon the federal criminal justice system, the federal system was (and still is) minuscule as compared to the combined systems of the fifty states. With the Bill of Rights provisions …
Fictions, Fault, And Forgiveness: Jury Nullification In A New Context, David N. Dorfman, Chris K. Iijima
Fictions, Fault, And Forgiveness: Jury Nullification In A New Context, David N. Dorfman, Chris K. Iijima
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Recently, critics of the Anglo-American jury system have complained that juries in criminal trials have been ignoring the law, in favor of defendants who claim that they lack criminal responsibility because they are afflicted by the various victimization syndromes now popularized in the mass media. In this Article, Professors Dorfman and Iijima counter this characterization of the "runaway" jury and argue that juries are not ignoring the law, but rather, are exercising a primary power of the jury, to nullify the application of the law when such application to a particular defendant is unjust. The Authors trace the development of …
Conscience And The Law: The English Criminal Jury, Robert C. Palmer
Conscience And The Law: The English Criminal Jury, Robert C. Palmer
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Verdict According to Conscience by Thomas Andrew Green
The Attaint, John M. Zane
The Attaint, John M. Zane
Michigan Law Review
The assize of novel disseisinoriginally lay against the disseisor in possession in favor of the disseisee, and was soon extended to the heir of -the disseisee, but not against the heir or grantee of the disseisor. But the disseisor might be dead or might have conveyed the land, and in such a case the disseisee would be driven to the writ of right with iis delays and chance of battle. But the cases where the defendant had come into possession under a lawful title which was limited in time and had ceased to exist, i.. e., cases where there was …
The Attaint, John M. Zane
The Attaint, John M. Zane
Michigan Law Review
The practice of attainting a jury was the method by which for centuries the English law corrected an erroneous finding of fact by the body of men who, in course of time, came to be called a jury. Today this necessary corrective of judicial administration is very inadequately performed by the judge or judges presiding over the trial. The proceeding is now called a motion for a new trial. The new trial is inadequate for the reason that it does not, as did the attaint, substitute a correct verdict for the one given. It merely reverses or sets aside the …