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Full-Text Articles in Law
Why Do Empirical Legal Scholarship?, Theodore Eisenberg
Why Do Empirical Legal Scholarship?, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
People conduct legal scholarship for many different reasons. This Article focuses on the demand for and reaction to scholarship that helps inform litigants, policymakers, and society as a whole about how the legal system works. Law schools do little to train generations of lawyers in how to systematically assess the state of the legal system and the legal system's performance. Schools leave such assessments largely to self-interested advocates and to other disciplines. Self-interested advocates have less interest in objective assessment of the system than in pushing preferred policy agendas. Academic disciplines other than law have a distinct advantage in that …
The Merciful Capital Juror, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey
The Merciful Capital Juror, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
We examine the role of mercy in capital sentencing along three dimensions. We first explain why mercy is a philosophically problematic virtue, and second, why it presently holds an ambiguous status within constitutional doctrine. Finally, we draw on interviews with jurors who served on capital cases in order better to understand how the behavior of merciful jurors compares to the behavior of their less merciful counterparts. Among other things, we find that merciful jurors tend to be better educated and to attend religious services regularly. We also find that merciful jurors are, as one might reasonably expect, more apt to …
The Employment Consequences Of Wrongful-Discharge Laws: Large, Small, Or None At All?, David H. Autor, John J. Donahue Iii, Stewart J. Schwab
The Employment Consequences Of Wrongful-Discharge Laws: Large, Small, Or None At All?, David H. Autor, John J. Donahue Iii, Stewart J. Schwab
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Attorney Fees In Class Action Settlements: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
Attorney Fees In Class Action Settlements: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Study of two comprehensive class action case data sets covering 1993-2002 shows that the amount of client recovery is overwhelmingly the most important determinant of the attorney fee award. Even in cases in which the courts engage in the lodestar calculation (the product of reasonable hours and a reasonable hourly rate), the client's recovery generally explains the pattern of awards better than the lodestar. Thus, the time and expense of a lodestar calculation may be wasteful. We also find no robust evidence that either recoveries for plaintiffs or fees of their attorneys increased overtime. The mean fee award in common …