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Articles 1 - 11 of 11

Full-Text Articles in Law

A Jury Of One: Opinion Formation, Conformity, And Dissent On Juries, Nicole L. Waters, Valerie P. Hans Sep 2009

A Jury Of One: Opinion Formation, Conformity, And Dissent On Juries, Nicole L. Waters, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Approximately 6 percent of criminal juries hang. But, how many dissenters carry the jury, hang the jury, or conform to the majority’s wishes? This article examines the formation of individual verdict preferences, the impact of deliberation, and the role of the dissenter using data from nearly 3,500 jurors who decided felony cases. Jurors were asked: “If it were entirely up to you as a one-person jury, what would your verdict have been in this case?” Over one-third of jurors, privately, would have voted against their jury’s decision. Analyses identify the characteristics of jurors who dissent, and distinguish dissenters who hang …


Knowing When To Trust Others: An Erp Study Of Decision-Making After Receiving Information From Unknown People, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Seana Coulson Jan 2009

Knowing When To Trust Others: An Erp Study Of Decision-Making After Receiving Information From Unknown People, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins, Seana Coulson

Faculty Scholarship

To address the neurocognitive mechanisms that underlie choices made after receiving information from an anonymous individual, reaction times (Experiment 1) and event-related brain potentials (Experiment 2) were recorded as participants played 3 variants of the Coin Toss game. In this game, participants guess the outcomes of unseen coin tosses after a person in another room (dubbed “the reporter”) observes the coin toss outcomes and then sends reports (which may or may not be truthful) to participants about whether the coins landed on heads or tails. Participants knew that the reporter's interests either were aligned with their own (Common Interests), opposed …


The "Hidden Judiciary": An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich Jan 2009

The "Hidden Judiciary": An Empirical Examination Of Executive Branch Justice, Chris Guthrie, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Andrew J. Wistrich

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Administrative law judges attract little scholarly attention, yet they decide a large fraction of all civil disputes. In this Article, we demonstrate that these executive branch judges, like their counterparts in the judicial branch, tend to make predominantly intuitive rather than predominantly deliberative decisions. This finding sheds new light on executive branch justice by suggesting that judicial intuition, not judicial independence, is the most significant challenge facing these important judicial officers.


Using Decision Analysis To Improve Malaria Control Policy Making, Jonathan B. Wiener, Randall A. Kramer, Katherine L. Dickinson, Richard M. Anderson, Vance G. Fowler, Marie Lynn Miranda, Clifford M. Mutero, Kathryn A. Saterson Jan 2009

Using Decision Analysis To Improve Malaria Control Policy Making, Jonathan B. Wiener, Randall A. Kramer, Katherine L. Dickinson, Richard M. Anderson, Vance G. Fowler, Marie Lynn Miranda, Clifford M. Mutero, Kathryn A. Saterson

Faculty Scholarship

Malaria and other vector-borne diseases represent a significant and growing burden in many tropical countries. Successfully addressing these threats will require policies that expand access to and use of existing control methods, such as insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) and artemesinin combination therapies (ACTs) for malaria, while weighing the costs and benefits of alternative approaches over time. This paper argues that decision analysis provides a valuable framework for formulating such policies and combating the emergence and re-emergence of malaria and other diseases. We outline five challenges that policy makers and practitioners face in the struggle against malaria, and demonstrate how decision …


Incorporating A 'Best Interests Of The Child' Approach Into Immigration Law And Procedure, Bridgette A. Carr Jan 2009

Incorporating A 'Best Interests Of The Child' Approach Into Immigration Law And Procedure, Bridgette A. Carr

Articles

United States immigration law and procedure frequently ignore the plight of children directly affected by immigration proceedings. This ignorance means decision-makers often lack the discretion to protect a child from persecution by halting the deportation of a parent, while parents must choose between abandoning their children in a foreign land and risking the torture of their children. United States immigration law systematically fails to consider the best interests of children directly affected by immigration proceedings. This failure has resulted in a split among the federal circuit courts of appeals regarding whether the persecution a child faces may be used to …


Judicial Oversight Over The Interstate Placement Of Foster Children: The Missing Element In Current Efforts To Reform The Interstate Compact On The Placement Of Children, Vivek Sankaran Jan 2009

Judicial Oversight Over The Interstate Placement Of Foster Children: The Missing Element In Current Efforts To Reform The Interstate Compact On The Placement Of Children, Vivek Sankaran

Articles

This article argues that current efforts to reform the Compact are flawed because they lack an essential element: judicial oversight of agency decision-making. The first section explores the important role that juvenile court judges play in making placement decisions for foster children. Next, an examination of the current problems in the interstate placement process demonstrates the vital need for judicial oversight of the system. Finally, a specific proposal is put forth on how best to incorporate judicial oversight without interfering with the sovereignty of states.


How Should We Study District Judge Decision-Making?, Pauline T. Kim, Margo Schlanger, Christina L. Boyd, Andrew D. Martin Jan 2009

How Should We Study District Judge Decision-Making?, Pauline T. Kim, Margo Schlanger, Christina L. Boyd, Andrew D. Martin

Articles

Understanding judicial decision-making requires attention to the specific institutional settings in which judges operate. The choices available to judges are determined not only by the law and facts of the case but also by procedural context. The incentives and constraints shaping judges’ decision-making will vary depending on, for example, whether they have a life-appointment or are elected; whether they hear cases alone or with colleagues; and whether and under what circumstances their decisions might be altered, overturned, or undone by the actions of others. The basic insight that the institutional context matters has led to increasingly sophisticated studies of how …


Happiness, Efficiency, And The Promise Of Decisional Equity: From Outcome To Process, Jeffrey L. Harrison Jan 2009

Happiness, Efficiency, And The Promise Of Decisional Equity: From Outcome To Process, Jeffrey L. Harrison

UF Law Faculty Publications

This article explains why outcome-oriented goals like efficiency, happiness, or well-being are ultimately of limited use as goals for law. Part II places happiness research in the context of past efforts to assess efficiency standards. Part III outlines the schism between efficiency and happiness and examines whether they can be reconciled. Part IV discusses the problems of relying on direct measures of happiness. The concept of decisional equity is described and examined in Part V.


Competition In The Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors’ Decisions?, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins Jan 2009

Competition In The Courtroom: When Does Expert Testimony Improve Jurors’ Decisions?, Cheryl Boudreau, Mathew D. Mccubbins

Faculty Scholarship

Many scholars lament the increasing complexity of jury trials and question whether the testimony of competing experts helps unsophisticated jurors to make informed decisions. In this article, we analyze experimentally the effects that the testimony of competing experts has on (1) sophisticated versus unsophisticated subjects' decisions and (2) subjects' deci- sions on difficult versus easy problems. Our results demonstrate that competing expert testimony, by itself, does not help unsophisticated subjects to behave as though they are sophisticated, nor does it help subjects make comparable decisions on difficult and easy problems. When we impose additional institutions (such as penalties for lying …


Limits Of Interpretivism, Richard A. Primus Jan 2009

Limits Of Interpretivism, Richard A. Primus

Articles

Justice Stephen Markman sits on the Supreme Court of my home state of Michigan. In that capacity, he says, he is involved in a struggle between two kinds of judging. On one side are judges like him. They follow the rules. On the other side are unconstrained judges who decide cases on the basis of what they think the law ought to be. This picture is relatively simple, and Justice Markman apparently approves of its simplicity. But matters may in fact be a good deal more complex.


The Case For Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir Jan 2009

The Case For Behaviorally Informed Regulation, Michael S. Barr, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir

Book Chapters

Policymakers approach human behavior largely through the perspective of the “rational agent” model, which relies on normative, a priori analyses of the making of rational decisions. This perspective is promoted in the social sciences and in professional schools, and has come to dominate much of the formulation and conduct of policy. An alternative view, developed mostly through empirical behavioral research, provides a substantially different perspective on individual behavior and its policy implications. Behavior, according to the empirical perspective, is the outcome of perceptions, impulses, and other processes that characterize the impressive machinery that we carry behind the eyes and between …