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Bias

2015

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Articles 1 - 18 of 18

Full-Text Articles in Law

Experts, Statistics, Science & Bad Science, Curtis E.A. Karnow Nov 2015

Experts, Statistics, Science & Bad Science, Curtis E.A. Karnow

Curtis E.A. Karnow

Articles, books, and other online resources relating to expert testimony with a specific focus on problems with peer review, bad science, and statistics


Why Bias Challenges To Administrative Adjudication Should Succeed, Kent Barnett Nov 2015

Why Bias Challenges To Administrative Adjudication Should Succeed, Kent Barnett

Missouri Law Review

Administrative adjudication’s partiality problem is a worthy candidate to join these claims for three reasons. First, prohibiting administrative adjudicators’ partiality, unlike some other structural areas, does not require overruling prior decisions and relies heavily on the Court’s recent precedent. Second, partiality challenges fit comfortably within the Court’s penchant for formalism and prophylaxes in structural constitutional matters. Indeed, formalism is much more justified for partiality challenges than certain other structural issues and has a longer jurisprudential provenance. Finally, as compared to other proposed challenges to the administrative state, challenges based on administrative partiality are more likely to earn enough votes to …


Blackness As Character Evidence, Mikah K. Thompson Sep 2015

Blackness As Character Evidence, Mikah K. Thompson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Federal Rule of Evidence 404 severely limits the government’s ability to offer evidence of a defendant’s character trait of violence to prove action in conformity with that trait on the occasion in question. The Rule states that such character evidence is generally inadmissible when offered to prove propensity. The Rule also allows the government to offer evidence of an alleged victim’s character for peacefulness in homicide cases where the defendant asserts the self-defense privilege. Although criminal defendants may offer character evidence under limited circumstances, Rule 404 creates a significant disincentive for doing so. Where a defendant offers evidence of an …


Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slavisa Tasic Sep 2015

Behavioral Public Choice And The Law, Gary M. Lucas Jr., Slavisa Tasic

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.


Not Your Mother's Will: Gender, Language, And Wills, Karen J. Sneddon Jun 2015

Not Your Mother's Will: Gender, Language, And Wills, Karen J. Sneddon

Marquette Law Review

“Boys will be boys, but girls must be young ladies” is an echoing patriarchal refrain from the past. Formal equality has not produced equality in all areas, as demonstrated by the continuing wage gap. Gender bias lingers and can be identified in language. This Article focuses on Wills, one of the oldest forms of legal documents, to explore the intersection of gender and language. With conceptual antecedents in pre-history, written Wills found in Ancient Egyptian tombs embody the core characteristics of modern Wills. The past endows the drafting and implementation of Wills with a wealth of traditions and experiences. The …


Instrument Choice, Carbon Emissions, And Information, Michael Wara May 2015

Instrument Choice, Carbon Emissions, And Information, Michael Wara

Michigan Journal of Environmental & Administrative Law

This Article examines the consequences of a previously unrecognized difference between pollutant cap-and-trade schemes and pollution taxes. Implementation of cap-and-trade relies on a forecast of future emissions, while implementation of a pollution tax does not. Realistic policy designs using either regulatory instrument almost always involve a phase-in over time to avoid economic disruption. Cap-and-trade accomplishes this phase-in via a limit on emissions that falls gradually below the forecast of future pollutant emissions. Emissions taxation accomplishes the same via a gradually increasing levy on pollution. Because of the administrative complexity of establishing an emissions trading market, cap-and-trade programs typically require between …


The Limits Of Moral Intuitions For Human Rights Advocacy, Andrew K. Woods May 2015

The Limits Of Moral Intuitions For Human Rights Advocacy, Andrew K. Woods

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The central ambition of human rights advocacy is to get people to care, who might otherwise not, about the suffering of others. To accomplish this, human rights advocates often appeal to moral intuitions by telling stories that evoke moral outrage, indignation, or guilt. Are these sorts of appeals a good way to promote human rights? The conventional wisdom suggests that they are. But perhaps the conventional wisdom is incomplete—perhaps human rights advocates should treat moral intuitions with skepticism rather than uncritical embrace. In this brief essay, I argue that appeals to moral intuitions are problematic because moral intuitions can lead …


Backsliding: The United States Supreme Court, Shelby County V. Holder And The Dismantling Of Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Bridgette Baldwin Apr 2015

Backsliding: The United States Supreme Court, Shelby County V. Holder And The Dismantling Of Voting Rights Act Of 1965, Bridgette Baldwin

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.


Bias In Disguise: The Constitutional Problems Of Arkansas’S Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act, John M. A. Dipippa Apr 2015

Bias In Disguise: The Constitutional Problems Of Arkansas’S Intrastate Commerce Improvement Act, John M. A. Dipippa

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.


A Pink Cadillac, An Iq Of 63, And A Fourteen-Year-Old From South Carolina: Why I Can No Longer Support The Death Penalty, Mark Earley Sr. Mar 2015

A Pink Cadillac, An Iq Of 63, And A Fourteen-Year-Old From South Carolina: Why I Can No Longer Support The Death Penalty, Mark Earley Sr.

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Role Of Race, Poverty, Intellectual Disability, And Mental Illness In The Decline Of The Death Penalty, Stephen B. Bright Mar 2015

The Role Of Race, Poverty, Intellectual Disability, And Mental Illness In The Decline Of The Death Penalty, Stephen B. Bright

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.


Of Reptiles And Velcro: The Brain's Negativity Bias And Persuasion, Kenneth D. Chestek Mar 2015

Of Reptiles And Velcro: The Brain's Negativity Bias And Persuasion, Kenneth D. Chestek

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Implicit Bias And The Legal Profession's "Diversity Crisis": A Call For Self-Reflection, Nicole E. Negowetti Mar 2015

Implicit Bias And The Legal Profession's "Diversity Crisis": A Call For Self-Reflection, Nicole E. Negowetti

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.


Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, Todd E. Pettys Jan 2015

Free Expression, In-Group Bias, And The Court's Conservatives: A Critique Of The Epstein-Parker-Segal Study, Todd E. Pettys

Todd E. Pettys

In a recent, widely publicized study, a prestigious team of political scientists concluded that there is strong evidence of ideological in-group bias among the Supreme Court’s members in First Amendment free-expression cases, with the current four most conservative justices being the Roberts Court’s worst offenders. Beneath the surface of the authors’ conclusions, however, one finds a surprisingly sizable combination of coding errors, superficial case readings, and questionable judgments about litigants’ ideological affiliations. Many of those problems likely flow either from shortcomings that reportedly afflict the Supreme Court Database (the data set that nearly always provides the starting point for empirical …


Judicial Bias: The Ongoing Challenge, Kathleen Mahoney Jan 2015

Judicial Bias: The Ongoing Challenge, Kathleen Mahoney

Journal of Dispute Resolution

This article calls for a renewed commitment to judicial education on the roles that gender, race, class and other biases can have on judicial decisions and impartiality. This article also calls for the appointment of a more representative and diverse judiciary. An explosion of activity occurred for about a decade between the late 1980s until the late 1990s to promote and implement social context education for judges to help judges understand the realities of people most unlike themselves, and to appoint judges to be more representative of the population of Canada. But this trend has diminished to the point that …


“Underdog” Arbitration: A Plan For Transparency, Ramona L. Lampley Jan 2015

“Underdog” Arbitration: A Plan For Transparency, Ramona L. Lampley

Faculty Articles

The use of mandatory, pre-dispute arbitration clauses in consumer, employment, health-care, and even nursing home agreements is ever-increasing, even though the general public has distrust and a lack of understanding of the nature of arbitration. The Supreme Court in AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion, and then in American Express Co. v. Italian Colors Restaurant, has signaled firmly that mandatory pre-dispute arbitration is here to stay. This is true even for individual low-value claims in which one party, say the consumer or employee, has little or no bargaining power. I call these claims “underdog claims.” There have been numerous proposals to …


High Court Pretense, Lower Court Candor: Judicial Impartiality After Capterton V. Massey Coal Co., Lynne H. Rambo Jan 2015

High Court Pretense, Lower Court Candor: Judicial Impartiality After Capterton V. Massey Coal Co., Lynne H. Rambo

Faculty Scholarship

Apolitical, impartial judging has always been our judicial ideal. In the last twenty years, however, special interest groups have sought power over (and through) judges by pouring millions into judicial elections, and the Court has recognized their first amendment right to do so. In the midst of this politicization of judicial elections, the Court five years ago reinforced the impartiality ideal, holding very broadly in Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. that it violates due process for a judge to sit whenever there is a “probability of bias,” i.e., whenever the average judge is unlikely to be neutral. Caperton involved a …


Believe It Or Not: Mitigating The Negative Effects Personal Belief And Bias Have On The Criminal Justice System, Sarah Mourer Dec 2014

Believe It Or Not: Mitigating The Negative Effects Personal Belief And Bias Have On The Criminal Justice System, Sarah Mourer

Sarah Mourer

This article examines the prosecutor’s and defense attorney’s personal pre-trial beliefs regarding the accused’s guilt or innocence. This analysis suggests that when an attorney does hold pretrial beliefs, such beliefs lead to avoidable bias and errors. These biases may alter the findings throughout all stages of the case. The procedure asking that the prosecution seek justice while having nothing more than probable cause results in the prosecutor’s need to have a belief in guilt before proceeding to trial. While this belief is intended to foster integrity and fairness in the criminal justice system, to the contrary, it actually contributes to …