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Litigation

Law and Society

2004

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Dilution Effect: Federalization, Fair Cross-Sections, And The Concept Of Community, Laura G. Dooley Jul 2004

The Dilution Effect: Federalization, Fair Cross-Sections, And The Concept Of Community, Laura G. Dooley

ExpressO

The question of the relevant community from which a fair cross-section of jurors should be drawn has received little theoretical attention. This article seeks to fill that gap by using communitarian and postmodern theory to give content to the idea of "community" in the fair cross-section context. This analysis is timely and has grave practical importance, given that the federal government is increasingly assuming the prosecution of crime previously dealt with at the state level. This "federalization" of criminal enforcement has the second-order effect of changing the "community" from which criminal juries will be drawn, particularly in urban areas surrounded …

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General Causation At A Crossroads In Toxic Tort Cases, Alani Golanski Dec 2003

General Causation At A Crossroads In Toxic Tort Cases, Alani Golanski

Alani Golanski

Traditional approaches to specific causation are not feasible in toxic tort litigations. This article explores in depth the middle path between such unworkable, traditional approaches and institutionally improbable proposals that causation simply be abolished when toxic products are at issue. The middle way relies on the new judicial acceptance of certain forms of statistical proof. Epidemiological findings, especially when conjoined with case-specific differential diagnosis testimony, support causal inferences and should be attainable in a wide variety of toxic tort cases.

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