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Full-Text Articles in Law

Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells Apr 1996

Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The law allows executioners to deny responsibility for what they have done by making it possible for them to believe they have not done it. The law treats members of capital sentencing juries quite differently. It seeks to ensure that they feel responsible for sentencing a defendant to death. This differential treatment rests on a presumed link between a capital sentencer's willingness to accept responsibility for the sentence she imposes and the accuracy and reliability of that sentence. Using interviews of 153 jurors who sat in South Carolina capital cases, this article examines empirically whether capital sentencing jurors assume responsibility …


Litigation Outcomes In State And Federal Courts: A Statistical Portrait, Theodore Eisenberg, John Goerdt, Brian Ostrom, David Rottman Apr 1996

Litigation Outcomes In State And Federal Courts: A Statistical Portrait, Theodore Eisenberg, John Goerdt, Brian Ostrom, David Rottman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

"U.S. Juries Grow Tougher on Plaintiffs in Lawsuits," the New York Times page-one headline reads. The story details how, in 1992, plaintiffs won 52 percent of the personal injury cases decided by jury verdicts, a decline from the 63 percent plaintiff success rate in 1989. The sound-byte explanations follow, including the notion that juries have learned that they, as part of the general population, ultimately pay the costs of high verdicts. Similar stories, reporting both increases and decreases in jury award levels, regularly make headlines. Jury Verdict Research, Inc. (JVR), a commercial service that sells case outcome information, often is …


The Past, Present, And Future Of Law And Economics, George A. Hay Jan 1996

The Past, Present, And Future Of Law And Economics, George A. Hay

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Any discussion about law and economics ought to begin with a definition or at least an explanation of what it is we are talking about. There is, however, a risk in starting there. Just as classics scholars may debate endlessly about who precisely should be counted as a classicist or philosophers might debate who can properly be counted as a Kantian, there is likely to be no consensus about precisely what counts as law and economics or who is doing it. Indeed, the acknowledged superstar and chief guru of the law and economics movement, Judge Richard Posner, has argued that, …