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Do Juries Add Value? Evidence From An Empirical Study Of Jury Trial Waiver Clauses In Large Corporate Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
Do Juries Add Value? Evidence From An Empirical Study Of Jury Trial Waiver Clauses In Large Corporate Contracts, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
We study jury trial waivers in a data set of 2,816 contracts contained as exhibits in Form 8-K filings by reporting corporations during 2002. Because these contracts are associated with events deemed material to the financial condition of SEC-reporting firms, they likely are carefully negotiated by sophisticated, well-informed parties and thus provide presumptive evidence about the value associated with the availability of jury trials. A minority of contracts, about 20 percent, waived jury trials. An additional 9 percent of contracts had arbitration clauses that effectively preclude jury trials though the reason for arbitration clauses need not specifically relate to juries. …
Foreigners' Fate In America's Courts: Empirical Legal Research, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg
Foreigners' Fate In America's Courts: Empirical Legal Research, Kevin M. Clermont, Theodore Eisenberg
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
This article revisits the controversy regarding how foreigners fare in U.S. courts. The available data, if taken in a sufficiently big sample from numerous case categories and a range of years, indicate that foreigners have fared better in the federal courts than their domestic counterparts have fared. Thus, the data offer no support for the existence of xenophobic bias in U.S. courts. Nor do they establish xenophilia, of course. What the data do show is that case selection drives the outcomes for foreigners. Foreigners’ aversion to U.S. forums can elevate the foreigners’ success rates, when measured as a percentage of …
Heuristics And Biases In Bankruptcy Judges, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Heuristics And Biases In Bankruptcy Judges, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Chris Guthrie, Andrew J. Wistrich
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Do specialized judges make better decisions than judges who are generalists? Specialized judges surely come to know their area of law well, but specialization might also allow judges to develop better, more reliable ways of assessing cases. We assessed this question by presenting a group of specialized judges with a set of hypothetical cases designed to elicit a reliance on common heuristics that can lead judges to make poor decisions. Although the judges resisted the influence of some of these heuristics, they also expressed a clear vulnerability to others. These results suggest that specialization does not produce better judgment.
The Flight From Arbitration: An Empirical Study Of Ex Ante Arbitration Clauses In The Contracts Of Publicly Held Companies, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
The Flight From Arbitration: An Empirical Study Of Ex Ante Arbitration Clauses In The Contracts Of Publicly Held Companies, Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller
Cornell Law Faculty Publications
Informed parties bargaining for their mutual advantage will tend to agree to provisions that maximize the social surplus. Such bargaining includes provisions regarding the resolution of disputes that might arise under the contract. Thus, if a form of alternative dispute resolution, such as binding arbitration, provides greater social benefits than litigation, the dynamics of the process should tend to induce the parties to include a clause submitting future disputes to arbitration. This Article studies the actual contracting practices of large, sophisticated actors with respect to arbitration clauses. We examined over 2800 contracts, filed with the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in …