Law Commons^™

Amicus Brief: Kumho Tire V. Carmichael, Neil Vidmar, Richard O. Lempert, Shari Seidman Diamond, Valerie P. Hans, Stephan Landsman, Robert Maccoun, Joseph Sanders, Harmon M. Hosch, Saul Kassin, Marc Galanter, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen Daniels, Edith Greene, Joanne Martin, Steven Penrod, James Richardson, Larry Heuer, Irwin Horowitz

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This brief addresses the issue of jury performance and jury responses to expert testimony. It reviews and summaries a substantial body of research evidence about jury behavior that has been produced over the past quarter century. The great weight of that evidence challenges the view that jurors abdicate their responsibilities as fact finders when faced with expert evidence or that they are pro-plaintiff, anti-defendant, and anti-business.

The Petitioners and amici on behalf of petitioners make a number of overlapping, but empirically unsupported, assertions about jury behavior in response to expert testimony, namely that juries are frequently incapable of critically evaluation …

Permitting Jury Discussions During Trial: Impact Of The Arizona Reform, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Valerie P. Hans, G. Thomas Munsterman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

A field experiment tested the effect of an Arizona civil jury reform that allows jurors to discuss evidence among themselves during the trial. Judges, jurors, attorneys, and litigants completed questionnaires in trials randomly assigned to either a Trial Discussions condition, in which jurors were permitted to discuss the evidence during trial, or a No Discussions condition, in which jurors were prohibited from discussing evidence during trial according to traditional admonitions. Judicial agreement with jury verdicts did not differ between conditions. Permitting jurors to discuss the evidence did affect the degree of certainty that jurors reported about their preferences at the …

The Timing Of Opinion Formation By Jurors In Civil Cases: An Empirical Examination, Paula Hannaford-Agor, Valerie P. Hans, Nicole L. Mott, G. Thomas Munsterman

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The question of when and how jurors form opinions about evidence presented at trial has been the focus of seemingly endless speculation. For lawyers, the question is how to capture the attention and approval of the jury at the earliest possible point in the trial. Their goal is to maximize the persuasiveness of their arguments--or at least to minimize the persuasiveness of those of the opposing side. Judges, in contrast, are more concerned about prejudgment. They regularly admonish jurors to suspend judgment until after all the evidence has been presented and after the jurors have been instructed on the law. …

Inbreeding In Law School Hiring: Assessing The Performance Of Faculty Hired From Within, Theodore Eisenberg, Martin T. Wells

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This study compares the scholarly impact of inbred entry-level law school faculty members with the scholarly impact of noninbred entry-level law school faculty members. The sample includes 32 law schools and approximately 700 entry-level faculty members. By our measure of performance, scholarly impact as measured by citation frequency, inbred entry-level law school faculty members do not perform as well as noninbred entry-level faculty members.

Employment Discrimination, Stewart J. Schwab

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article first parses the multiple overlapping definitions of discrimination, including distinctions between group and individual discrimination and between segregation and discrimination in pay. The article then summarizes the major economic models of discrimination, particularly Becker’s taste-for-discrimination model and statistical-discrimination models, as well as sorting the status-production models. The discussion focuses on the conditions under which markets will tend to eliminate discrimination, noting that this occurs in a more limited range of situations than commonly recognized. The article next surveys the economic role of anti-discrimination laws, evaluating arguments that the law speeds the journey to a non-discriminatory equilibrium and that …