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Full-Text Articles in Law
Contrition In The Courtroom: Do Apologies Affect Adjudication?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Contrition In The Courtroom: Do Apologies Affect Adjudication?, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Apologies usually help to repair social relationships and appease aggrieved parties. Previous research has demonstrated that in legal settings, apologies influence how litigants and juries evaluate both civil and criminal defendants. Judges, however, routinely encounter apologies offered for instrumental reasons, such as to reduce a civil damage award or fine, or to shorten a criminal sentence. Frequent exposure to insincere apologies might make judges suspicious of or impervious to apologies. In a series of experimental studies with judges as research participants, we find that in some criminal settings, apologies can induce judges to be more lenient, but overall, apologizing to …
How Lawyers' Intuitions Prolong Litigation, Andrew J. Wistrich, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
How Lawyers' Intuitions Prolong Litigation, Andrew J. Wistrich, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Most lawsuits settle, but some settle later than they should. Too many compromises occur only after protracted discovery and expensive motion practice. Sometimes the delay precludes settlement altogether. Why does this happen? Several possibilities—such as the alleged greed of lawyers paid on an hourly basis—have been suggested, but they are insufficient to explain why so many cases do not settle until the eve of trial. We offer a novel account of the phenomenon of settling on the courthouse steps that is based upon empirical research concerning judgment and choice. Several cognitive illusions—the framing effect, the confirmation bias, nonconsequentialist reasoning, and …
It's Not All Statistics: Demystifying Empirical Research, Sarah J. Morath
It's Not All Statistics: Demystifying Empirical Research, Sarah J. Morath
Akron Law Faculty Publications
Although Oliver Wendell Holmes was touting the merits of empirical research over one hundred years ago, only recently have legal academics created a journal and conference dedicated to empirical legal studies. Interestingly, topics of interest to legal writing professors have been a source for empirical research well before the emergence these specialized journals and conferences. For example, empirical research comparing the use of legal prose to plain English in appellate briefs was taking place over 25 years ago. In 1996, the second volume of The Journal of Legal Writing Institute included an empirical study evaluating which professors’ comments students found …
Litigating Toward Settlement, Christina L. Boyd, David A. Hoffman
Litigating Toward Settlement, Christina L. Boyd, David A. Hoffman
All Faculty Scholarship
Civil litigation typically ends when the parties compromise. While existing theories of settlement primarily focus on information exchange, we instead examine how motion practice, especially non-discovery motions, can substantially shape parties’ knowledge about their cases and thereby influence the timing of settlement. Using docket-level federal district court data, we find a number of strong effects regarding how motions can influence this process, including that the filing of a motion significantly speeds case settlement, that granted motions are more immediately critical to settlement timing than motions denied, and that plaintiff victories have a stronger effect than defendant victories. These results provide …
Patent Variation: Discerning Diversity Among Patent Functions, Jessica Silbey
Patent Variation: Discerning Diversity Among Patent Functions, Jessica Silbey
Faculty Scholarship
This Article describes and analyzes qualitative interview data collected over a five-year period. The goal of the interviews was to explore the roles of intellectual property (“IP”) in IP rich fields. Interviews were with diverse actors in a wide-range of industries: film, book publishing, visual arts, internet commerce, biology, engineering, chemistry, computer science. The data described and analyzed in this Article focuses on the specific question about the diverse functioning of patents in the subset of interviewees who are scientists and engineers, their lawyers and business partners. The Article proceeds in two parts. Part I describes the empirical dimension of …
Reimagining Democratic Inclusion: Asian Americans And The Voting Rights Act, Ming Hsu Chen, Taeku Lee
Reimagining Democratic Inclusion: Asian Americans And The Voting Rights Act, Ming Hsu Chen, Taeku Lee
Publications
The current legal framework for protecting voting rights in the United States has been dramatically destabilized by Supreme Court decisions re-interpreting the protections against minority vote dilution and requires rethinking to survive modern challenges. At the same time, the nation has itself undergone dramatic changes in the racial composition of its polity and in the complexity and salience of race as a factor in political life. In this paper, we focus on a relatively unexamined constituent of this complex reality of modern racial diversity that illustrates some of the core features that all minority groups face in continuing VRA challenges: …