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Articles 1 - 27 of 27
Full-Text Articles in Law
Incorporating Social Science Into Criminal Defense Practice, Eve Brensike Primus
Incorporating Social Science Into Criminal Defense Practice, Eve Brensike Primus
Articles
In recent decades, social scientists have created a treasure trove of empirical and sociological data that defenders can and should use to help their clients. Evidence rules, criminal law, and criminal procedure are filled with concepts informed by social science. When is evidence likely to unfairly prejudice a defendant in the eyes of a jury? Do police interact differently with members of minority populations and how should that inform concepts of reasonableness? How easy or difficult is it for people to identify individuals they see during high-stress criminal episodes? How effective are police interrogation tactics at getting at the truth …
Implicit Bias In Daily Perceptions And Legal Judgments, Keith B. Maddox, Samuel R. Sommers
Implicit Bias In Daily Perceptions And Legal Judgments, Keith B. Maddox, Samuel R. Sommers
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In today’s demonstration, we explored the audience’s positive and negative associations with blacks and whites. The demonstration is an adaptation of the Implicit Association Test (www.projectimplicit.net), a computer-based task designed to explore mental connections between various concepts. Participants were presented with a list of concepts (stereotypically black and white names, pleasant and unpleasant concepts) in a column down the middle of a screen along with the response categories (black/white or Pleasant/Unpleasant) along the left and right sides. When reading a word, participants were asked to categorize it by slapping the knee (left or right) that corresponds to the category displayed …
Can Prostitution Law Reform Curb Sex Trafficking? Theory And Evidence On Scale Substitution, And Replacement Effects, Simon Hedlin
Can Prostitution Law Reform Curb Sex Trafficking? Theory And Evidence On Scale Substitution, And Replacement Effects, Simon Hedlin
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
Sex trafficking, a pervasive problem in many parts of the world, has become increasingly salient to policymakers and the general public. Activists, politicians, and scholars continue to engage in debates about how best to curb it. This Article discusses one especially contentious dimension of these debates: does banning prostitution reduce sex trafficking? Or is legalizing prostitution the optimal approach? Or is there a third, better way? Proceeding both theoretically and empirically, this Article seeks to cast light on the relationship between different types of prostitution laws and the prevalence of sex trafficking and human trafficking. It attempts to make three …
The Mismatch Myth In U.S. Higher Education: A Synthesis Of The Empirical Evidence At The Law School And Undergraduate Levels, William C. Kidder, Richard O. Lempert
The Mismatch Myth In U.S. Higher Education: A Synthesis Of The Empirical Evidence At The Law School And Undergraduate Levels, William C. Kidder, Richard O. Lempert
Book Chapters
Opponents of affirmative action in higher education commonly cite two principles to justify their opposition. One is that admissions to institutions of higher education should be based on "merit," which is often treated by critics of affirmative action as consisting of little more than test score results and high school or undergraduate grades. The second is the legal and moral imperative of not making consequential decisions based on race. We shall not address these principles except to note that others have shown that they do not make the case against affirmative action (Carbado & Harris 2008, Shultz & Zedeck 2011, …
The Effect Of Time Of Day On Reference Interactions In Academic Law Libraries, Seth Quidachay-Swan
The Effect Of Time Of Day On Reference Interactions In Academic Law Libraries, Seth Quidachay-Swan
Law Librarian Scholarship
Libraries and librarians generally aspire to provide the best services they can to their user communities. But what does that mean? Assumptions about what is needed may not necessarily align with the actual preferences of a given user group. In this column, Seth Quidachay-Swan presents a case study that explores the interaction between time of day and medium of information delivery. Examining data gathered in a law library environment, the author concludes that modern presumptions about the diminishing need for traditional information services may not allow for effectively managing user expectations.
Do Liquidated Damages Encourage Breach? A Psychological Experiment, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
Do Liquidated Damages Encourage Breach? A Psychological Experiment, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
Michigan Law Review
This Article offers experimental evidence that parties are more willing to exploit efficient-breach opportunities when the contract in question includes a liquidated-damages clause. Economists claim that the theory of efficient breach allows us to predict when parties will choose to breach a contract if the legal remedy for breach is expectation damages. However, the economic assumption of rational wealth-maximizing actors fails to capture important, shared, nonmonetary values and incentives that shape behavior in predictable ways. When interpersonal obligations are informal or underspecified, people act in accordance with shared community norms, like the moral norm of keeping promises. However, when sanctions …
Preserving A Racial Hierarchy: A Legal Analysis Of The Disparate Racial Impact Of Legacy Preferences In University Admissions, Kathryn Ladewski
Preserving A Racial Hierarchy: A Legal Analysis Of The Disparate Racial Impact Of Legacy Preferences In University Admissions, Kathryn Ladewski
Michigan Law Review
Many public and private universities around the country employ legacy admissions preferences in order to give children of alumni special consideration in the admissions process. Such preferences disproportionately benefit white applicants at the cost of their nonwhite counterparts, because past generations of college students were less diverse than today's applicant pool. However, universities argue that their legacy preferences are justified because they assist in alumni fundraising efforts. This Note presents a statistical analysis to argue that legacy preferences are prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because they have a discriminatory effect on minority college applicants and have not …
Leaps And Bounds, Nestor M. Davidson
Leaps And Bounds, Nestor M. Davidson
Michigan Law Review
Imagine how stunted our understanding of the federal government would be without any detailed scholarly examination of the U.S. Constitution itself. As remarkable as that sounds, that is essentially the problem that Gerald Frug and David Barron have set out to remedy for local governments in their superb City Bound. In the book, Frug and Barron take a comprehensive, empirical look at the legal frameworks under which cities and other local governments operate, providing an invaluable roadmap for understanding the hidden architecture of legal constraints that-largely without notice-are shaping America's urban future. Why this kind of analysis has rarely been …
Will Quants Rule The (Legal) World?, Edward K. Cheng
Will Quants Rule The (Legal) World?, Edward K. Cheng
Michigan Law Review
The quants are coming! And they are here to stay-so argues Professor Ian Ayres' in his new book, Super Crunchers, which details the brave new world of statistical prediction and how it has already begun to affect our lives. For years, academic researchers have known about the considerable and at times surprising advantages of statistical models over the considered judgments of experienced clinicians and experts. Today, these models are emerging all over the landscape. Whether the field is wine, baseball, medicine, or consumer relations, they are vying against traditional experts for control over how we make decisions. To be …
Practice Makes Perfect? An Empirical Study Of Claim Construction Reversal Rates In Patent Cases, David L. Schwartz
Practice Makes Perfect? An Empirical Study Of Claim Construction Reversal Rates In Patent Cases, David L. Schwartz
Michigan Law Review
This Article examines whether U.S. district court judges improve their skills at patent claim construction with experience, including the experience of having their own cases reviewed by the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In theory, higher courts teach doctrine to lower courts via judicial decisions, and lower courts learn from these decisions. This Article tests the teaching-and-learning premise on the issue of claim construction in the realities of patent litigation. While others have shown that the Federal Circuit reverses a large percentage of lower court claim constructions, no one has analyzed whether judges with more claim construction appeal …
Law Enforcement In Subordinated Communities: Innovation And Response, Richard Delgado
Law Enforcement In Subordinated Communities: Innovation And Response, Richard Delgado
Michigan Law Review
Policing styles and policy reform today exhibit a ferment that we have not seen since the turbulent sixties. The reasons propelling reform include some of the same forces that propelled it then - minority communities agitating for a greater voice, demands for law and order - but also some that are new, such as the greater premium that society places on security in a post-9/11 world. Three recent books discuss this new emphasis on styles of policing. Each centers on policing in minority communities. Steve Herbert's Citizens, Cops, and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community examines the innovation known as …
Addressing Default Trends In Patent-Based Section 337 Proceedings In The United States International Trade Commission, John C. Evans
Addressing Default Trends In Patent-Based Section 337 Proceedings In The United States International Trade Commission, John C. Evans
Michigan Law Review
Section 337 of the Tarif Act of 1930 empowers the United States International Trade Commission to investigate imports to ensure imports do not infringe on U.S. trademarks. The Commission permits patent, copyright, and trademark owners to notify the Commission of possibly infringing imports and to obtain exclusion orders that prevent importation of products that infringe their intellectual property. The total number of investigations increased from 1996 to 2005, yet the proportion of respondent defaults rose as well. The increase in defaults suggests there is some systemic difficulty in ensuring full participation. This Note argues that the res judicata effects of …
Social Science And The Evolving Standards Of Death Penalty Law, Samuel R. Gross, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Social Science And The Evolving Standards Of Death Penalty Law, Samuel R. Gross, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Book Chapters
Unlike many of the topics covered in this book, death penalty litigation involves a wide variety of empirical issues. The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishment inflicted." But what is a "cruel and unusual punishment?" It could be a punishment that is morally unacceptable to the American people, like cutting off noses or hands. Following the other clauses of the amendment, it could be a punishment that is excessive, in that a lesser penalty would achieve the same ends. For example, if a …
The Debt Dilemma, Katherine Porter
The Debt Dilemma, Katherine Porter
Michigan Law Review
Part I describes the nature of credit card spending and explores the usefulness of Mann's comparative approach to studying credit cards. Part II evaluates Mann's findings on the overall relationships between individual credit card transactions and aggregate levels of spending, borrowing, and bankruptcy. It also briefly analyzes the relationship between his findings and policy recommendations. Part III explores data on families who refrain from credit card use and struggle with serious financial distress. Part IV revisits Mann's policy recommendations in light of this new data. I conclude that implementing credit card reform would offer families only partial, albeit valuable, protection …
The Economic Impact Of Backdating Of Executive Stock Options, M. P. Narayanan, Cindi A. Schipani, H. Nejat Seyhun
The Economic Impact Of Backdating Of Executive Stock Options, M. P. Narayanan, Cindi A. Schipani, H. Nejat Seyhun
Michigan Law Review
This Article discusses the economic impact of legal, tax, disclosure, and incentive issues arising from the revelation of dating games with regard to executive option grant dates. It provides an estimate of the value loss incurred by shareholders of firms implicated in backdating and compares it to the potential gain that executives might have obtained through backdating. Using a sample of firms that have already been implicated in backdating, we find that the revelation of backdating results in an average loss to shareholders of about 7%. This translates to about $400 million per firm. By contrast, we estimate that the …
Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring
Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring
Michigan Law Review
Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as their reputations suggest? Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's …
Sarbanes-Oxley And The Cross-Listing Premium, Kate Litvak
Sarbanes-Oxley And The Cross-Listing Premium, Kate Litvak
Michigan Law Review
This article tests whether the Sarbanes-Oxley Act ("SOX") affected the premium that investors are willing to pay for shares of foreign companies cross-listed in the United States. I find that from year-end 2001 (pre-SOX) to year-end 2002 (after SOX adoption), the Tobin's q and market/book ratios of foreign companies subject to SOX (cross-listed on levels 2 or 3) declined significantly, relative to Tobin's q and market/book ratios of both (i) matching non-cross-listed foreign companies from the same country, the same industry, and of similar size, and (ii) cross-listed companies from the same country that are not subject to SOX (listed …
The Cognitive Psychology Of Circumstantial Evidence, Kevin Jon Heller
The Cognitive Psychology Of Circumstantial Evidence, Kevin Jon Heller
Michigan Law Review
Empirical research indicates that jurors routinely undervalue circumstantial evidence (DNA, fingerprints, and the like) and overvalue direct evidence (eyewitness identifications and confessions) when making verdict choices, even though false-conviction statistics indicate that the former is normally more probative and more reliable than the latter The traditional explanation of this paradox, based on the probability-threshold model of jury decision-making, is that jurors simply do not understand circumstantial evidence and thus routinely underestimate its effect on the objective probability of the defendant's guilt. That may be true in some situations, but it fails to account for what is known in cognitive psychology …
Inside The Administrative State: A Critical Look At The Practice Of Presidential Control, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Inside The Administrative State: A Critical Look At The Practice Of Presidential Control, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Michael P. Vandenbergh
Michigan Law Review
From the inception of the administrative state, scholars have proposed various models of agency decision-making to render such decision-making accountable and effective, only to see those models falter when confronted by actual practice. Until now, the "presidential control" model has been largely impervious to this pattern. That model, which brings agency decision-making under the direction of the president, has strengthened over time, winning broad scholarly endorsement and bipartisan political support. But it, like prior models, relies on abstractions - for example, that the president represents public preferences and resists parochial pressures that do not hold up as a factual matter. …
Evolving Objective Standards: A Developmental Approach To Constitutional Review Of Morals Legislation, Christian J. Grostic
Evolving Objective Standards: A Developmental Approach To Constitutional Review Of Morals Legislation, Christian J. Grostic
Michigan Law Review
This Note argues that the Supreme Court's recent jurisprudence regarding morals legislation mirrors the findings of empirical research on moral and psychological development. Specifically, the Supreme Court upholds morals legislation only if it is justified by stage five reasoning. Part I examines significant Supreme Court cases related to morals legislation over the last 50 years and argues that the Supreme Court has consistently upheld morals legislation that is justified by stage five reasoning, while consistently striking down as unconstitutional morals legislation that is not. Part II argues that a developmental approach to constitutional review of morals legislation, while consistent with …
Signatures Of Ideology: The Case Of The Supreme Court's Criminal Docket, Ward Farnsworth
Signatures Of Ideology: The Case Of The Supreme Court's Criminal Docket, Ward Farnsworth
Michigan Law Review
Everyone suspects that Supreme Court justices' own views of policy play a part in their decisions, but the size and nature of the part is a matter of vague impression and frequent dispute. Do their preferences exert some pressure at the margin or are they better viewed as the mainsprings of decision? The latter claim, identified with legal realism, has been lent some support by political scientists who point out that some justices regularly vote for or against certain kinds of claims (for example, under the Fourth Amendment), or that votes in some areas are broadly predictable according to a …
A Theory In Search Of A Court, And Itself: Judicial Minimalism At The Supreme Court Bar, Neil S. Siegel
A Theory In Search Of A Court, And Itself: Judicial Minimalism At The Supreme Court Bar, Neil S. Siegel
Michigan Law Review
According to the prevailing wisdom in academic public law, constitutional theory is a field that seeks to articulate and evaluate abstract accounts of the nature of the United States Constitution. Theorists offer those accounts as guides to subsequent judicial construction of constitutional provisions. As typically conceived, therefore, constitutional theory tends to proceed analytically from the general to the particular; its animating idea is that correct decisions in constitutional cases presuppose theoretical commitments to the methodological principles that should guide constitutional interpretation and the substantive values such interpretation should advance. In its enthusiasm for abstraction, constitutional theory has, at times, generated …
Apology Within A Moral Dialectic: A Reply To Professor Robbennolt, Lee Taft
Apology Within A Moral Dialectic: A Reply To Professor Robbennolt, Lee Taft
Michigan Law Review
Over the last several years, much has been written about the role of apology in facilitating the resolution of legal disputes. Within this body of work a debate has developed among legal scholars, practitioners, and legislators. Under traditional rules of evidence an apology which acknowledged fault would enter evidence as an admission against interest. Now there is a movement to legislatively "protect" apologies from the effects of the traditional rule in order to facilitate apology without evidentiary encumbrance. Scholars who have argued in favor of the relaxation of the traditional rule have largely relied on anecdotal evidence to support their …
E' Is For Eclectic: Multiple Perspectives On Evidence (Symposium: New Perspectives On Evidence), Richard D. Friedman
E' Is For Eclectic: Multiple Perspectives On Evidence (Symposium: New Perspectives On Evidence), Richard D. Friedman
Articles
A conference titled "New Perspectives on Evidence: Experts, Empirical Study and Economics" has a pronounced alliterative theme, a theme made even more apparent when, inevitably in evidentiary discourse, epistemological questions come to the fore. It is enough to make one suspect that the conference is secretly brought to you by the letter "E," hiding behind its public front, the Olin Foundation. Putting aside such conspiratorial thoughts, all these "E's" suggest the presence of a meta-"E"-Eclecticism. Indeed, I believe this conference has demonstrated the need for an eclectic approach to evidentiary problems. That should be no surprise. The domain of evidentiary …
Cultural Differences And Discrimination: Samoans Before A Public Housing Eviction Board, Richard O. Lempert, Karl Monsma
Cultural Differences And Discrimination: Samoans Before A Public Housing Eviction Board, Richard O. Lempert, Karl Monsma
Articles
In Hawaii Samoans are a stigmatized ethnic group. We examine how this group is treated by a public housing eviction board. Statistical analysis suggests Samoans are discriminated against in financial cases. Interviews indicate, however, that Samoans are disadvantaged largely because their excuses are not persuasive and would not be regardless of the ethnicity of the tenants making them. In this sense Samoans are treated "like any other tenant," and illegal discrimination, as defined by the Four- teenth Amendment, has not occurred. But Samoans make unpersuasive excuses more often than other tenants because excuses that are reasonable in the context of …
Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Some Steps Between Attitudes And Verdicts, Phoebe C. Ellsworth
Book Chapters
Most research that has attempted to predict verdict preferences on the basis of stable juror characteristics, such as attitudes and personality traits, has found that individual differences among jurors are not very useful predictors, accounting for only a small proportion of the variance in verdict choices. Some commentators have therefore concluded that verdicts are overwhelmingly accounted for by "the weight of the evidence," and that differences among jurors have negligible effects. But there is a paradox here: In most cases the weight of the evidence is insufficient to produce firstballot unanimity in the jury (Hans & Vidmar, 1986; Hastie, Penrod, …
Queries 'N Theories: An Instructional Game On The Dot, Dot, Dot... Approach To Scientific Method, Layman E. Allen
Queries 'N Theories: An Instructional Game On The Dot, Dot, Dot... Approach To Scientific Method, Layman E. Allen
Articles
QUERIES 'N THEORIES provides a parallel to the strong inference approach to scientific method - designing experiments, observing data, and theorizing. The reiter- ated use of the DOT approach (Design, Observe, Theorize) in the problem-solving required by the game mirrors the regular, systematic application of strong inference in some areas of science (e.g., high energy physics and molecular biology) that have moved ahead much more rapidly than others. Moreover, the game embodies and provides practice in two aspects of scientific theorizing and designing which John Platt has pointed out as central to scientific advance: (1) the usefulness of multiple hypotheses …