Jury Decide Research Articles

Judge lets jury decide if employee was victim

Case name: Lewis v. University of Pennsylvania, No. 16‐5874 (E.D. Pa. 01/29/18).

Judge lets jury decide if employee was victim

Case name: Lewis v. University of Pennsylvania, No. 16‐5874 (E.D. Pa. 01/29/18).

Judge lets jury decide if employee was victim

Case name: Lewis v. University of Pennsylvania, No. 16‐5874 (E.D. Pa. 01/29/18).

Judge lets jury decide if university was fair

Case name: United States of America v. New Mexico State University, et al., No. 16‐CV‐911 (D. N.M. 02/06/18).

Judge lets jury decide if employee was victim

Case name: Lewis v. University of Pennsylvania, No. 16‐5874 (E.D. Pa. 01/29/18).

Judge lets jury decide if employee was victim

Case name: Lewis v. University of Pennsylvania, No. 16‐5874 (E.D. Pa. 01/29/18).

The Death Penalty: Should the Judge or the Jury Decide Who Dies?

This article addresses the effect of judge versus jury decision making through analysis of a database of all capital sentencing phase hearing trials in the State of Delaware from 1977–2007. Over the three decades of the study, Delaware shifted responsibility for death penalty sentencing from the jury to the judge. Currently, Delaware is one of the handful of states that gives the judge the final decision-making authority in capital trials. Controlling for a number of legally relevant and other predictor variables, we find that the shift to judge sentencing significantly increased the number of death sentences. Statutory aggravating factors, stranger homicides, and the victim's gender also increased the likelihood of a death sentence, as did the county of the homicide. We reflect on the implications of these results for debates about the constitutionality of judge sentencing in capital cases.

The Death Penalty: Should the Judge or the Jury Decide Who Dies?

This article addresses the effect of judge versus jury decision making through analysis of a database of all capital sentencing phase hearing trials in the state of Delaware from 1977-2007. Over the three decades of the study, Delaware shifted responsibility for death penalty sentencing from the jury to the judge. Currently, Delaware is one of the handful of states that gives the judge the final decision making authority in capital trials. Controlling for a number of legally-relevant and other predictor variables, we find that the shift to judge sentencing significantly increased the number of death sentences. Statutory aggravating factors, stranger homicides, and the victim’s gender also increased the likelihood of a death sentence, as did the county of the homicide. We reflect on the implications of these results for debates about the constitutionality of judge sentencing in capital cases.

Why Do Juries Decide If Patents are Valid?

For the last two decades, patent lawyers and courts have assumed that the Constitution requires that juries decide whether patents are valid. But that assumption rests on an uncertain foundation. Juries did not decide patent validity during most of American history, and as recently as 30 years ago jury trials in patent cases were quite rare. There is, surprisingly, no precedential decision resolving the Seventh Amendment question. And English practice before 1791 -- the basis for Seventh Amendment jurisprudence -- is ambiguous at best on whether juries must decide patent validity. I argue that if and when the issue is presented to the Supreme Court, the Court is unlikely to find a constitutional right to jury trial on issues of patent validity, and certainly not the broad right of the sort that is now common practice. Removing the jury from most patent validity determinations would change patent litigation in important ways.

Book Section: Essay and Review: Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide

Book Section: Essay and Review: Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide

Punitive Damages: Should Juries Decide?

How Juries Decide is a pathbreaking work of empirical scholarship based on experiments conducted with more than 8,000 jury-eligible citizens and more than 600 mock juries. Its basic premise - that cognitive flaws in human decisionmaking, especially those affecting the translation process by which moral judgments are transformed into dollar awards, lead to erratic and unprincipled punitive damages awards - has already had an important impact not only on scholarly literature but also on judicial decisionmaking in high profile suits. This Review offers a methodological, doctrinal, and institutional critique of this widely influential study, with particular emphasis on the discrepancies between the empirical data presented and the policy reforms advanced - which include, at the extreme, a call to banish the jury from punitive damages decisionmaking. The Review examines critically the authors' conclusions that jurors are intuitive retributionists and unable (or unwilling) to follow instructions based on the non-retributive optimal deterrence theory of punitive damages. More fundamentally, the Review challenges the authors' rigid separation between retributive-based punitive damages, which are linked to jurors' moral evaluations, from remedial-based compensatory damages (including pain and suffering), which are not. Although the authors fashion a seemingly narrowly tailored attack on jurors' assessments of punitive damages, in fact they raise fundamental questions about the civil jury system as a whole, questions that are in no relevant way confined to punitive damages. Conversely, to the extent that there is any non-retributive component to punitive damages, their attack upon the jury's ability to assess punitive damages might not be warranted across the board. What emerges is the distinct possibility that a system of non-retributive punitive damages might survive the authors' empirical challenges. Finally, How Juries Decide pays too little attention to institutional context and wholly overlooks potentially effective reforms within the existing jury system, such as those that take into account anchoring effects and regional differences among jurors - reforms that are clearly supported by their empirical findings.

How Relevant is Jury Rationality?

This essay reviews Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide by Cass Sunstein, et al. The book provides a good example of a recent trend: the use of behavioralist research to justify surprisingly paternalistic legal reforms. While critics of behavioralism often contend that its theoretical foundations are weak, this approach is unlikely to prove an effective rejoinder in the new debate about what kinds of paternalism are made permissible by human irrationality. A better approach: (1) notes the lack of a nexus between behavioralism and the supposed emergent necessity of paternalist reforms; and (2) suggests that juror unwillingness to apply cost-benefit formula provides the true motivating force for the new paternalism in law and economics. Rather than asking if jurors act rationally (and punishing them if they will not), we should instead question what law and economists mean when they use the word rational as an initial matter.

Let the jury decide: Assessing the cultural feasibility of total systems intervention

The tone of Haridimos Tsoukas' original assault on TSI seriously detracts from a case that still requires some answering. On the other hand, I do not believe that Jackson is being especially ambitious or arrogant about the claims which he argues set TSI apart from other management science methodologies. He is probably correct in his assertion that no other “version” of management science takes as broad a perspective or is as openly self-critical as is TSI. For these reasons alone, TSI deserves a fair crack of the whip. The broad thrust of argument developed here is that TSI is probably one of the most “systemically desirable” frameworks for systems research and intervention that has emerged in recent years. Despite this, for it to achieve its potential, it must find favor with those members of the systems community who are targeted as potential users. Unfortunately as members of entrenched subcultures, many of these individuals may find it difficult to put into practice all of what TSI entails. Jackson points out that TSI seeks to avoid the situation where purveyors and enthusiasts of particular methodologies approach organizational situations according to the metaphor embedded in their favored approach. I agree with the sentiment but fear he may have underestimated the resilience of the cultural obstacles that TSI, in the short term at least, will be hard pushed to overcome. In any event the jury will decide.

The psychology of criminal justice

Acknowledgements. List of Figures. List of Tables. Introduction. 1. Who is the criminal? 2. Are Criminals Morally Immature? 3. Preparedness for Crime. 4. Calculating Criminal Behavior. 5. Criminal-Victim Interaction. 6. Social Psychology of Criminal Liability. 7. Police on Crime. 8. Stories in Court. 9. Testifying in Court. 10. Twelve Available People: How Juries Decide. 11. Punishing the Offender: Sentencing in Practice. 12. Procedure and the Distribution of Criminal Justice. References. Index.

When should a jury decide damages when negligence is admitted?

When should a jury decide damages when negligence is admitted?