Law Commons^™

Quiet Rebellion Ii: An Empirical Analysis Of Declining Federal Drug Sentences Including Data From The District Level, Frank O. Bowman, Michael Heise

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This is the second of two articles in which we seek an explanation for the hitherto unexamined fact that the average length of prison sentences imposed in federal court for narcotics violations declined by more than 15% between 1991-92 and 2000.

Our first article, Quiet Rebellion? Explaining Nearly a Decade of Declining Federal Drug Sentences, 86 Iowa Law Review 1043 (May 2001) ( "Rebellion I" ), examined national sentencing data in an effort to determine whether the decline in federal drug sentences is real (rather than a statistical anomaly), and to identify and analyze possible causes of the decline. We …

U.S. Jury Reform: The Active Jury And The Adversarial Ideal, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

In many countries, lay people participate as decision makers in legal cases. Some countries include their citizens in the justice system as lay judges or jurors, who assess cases independently. The legal systems of other nations combine lay and law-trained judges who decide cases together in mixed tribunals. The International Conference on Lay Participation in the Criminal Trial in the 21st Century provided useful contrasts among different methods of incorporating lay voices into criminal justice systems worldwide. Systems with inquisitorial methods are more likely to employ mixed courts, whereas adversarial systems more often use juries. Research presented at the Conference …

Plaintiphobia In The Appellate Courts: Civil Rights Really Do Differ From Negotiable Instruments, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Professors Clermont and Eisenberg conducted a systematic analysis of appellate court behavior and report that defendants have a substantial advantage over plaintiffs on appeal. Their analysis attempted to control for different variables that may affect the decision to appeal or the appellate outcome, including case complexity, case type, amount in controversy, and whether there had been a judge or a jury trial. Once they accounted for these variables and explored and discarded various alternate explanations, they came to the conclusion that a defendants' advantage exists probably because of appellate judges' misperceptions that trial level adjudicators are pro-plaintiff.