Legal Outcomes Research Articles

How do infants enter and move through the care and family justice systems in Wales? Protocol for a population-based data linkage study.

ObjectivesWe aim to determine the proportion of infants entering care in Wales via the two primary legal routes (section 76 of the Social Services and Wellbeing (Wales) Act 2014, and section 31 of the Children Act 1989), and associations between mode of entry and infant characteristics and outcomes. ApproachThis is a longitudinal cohort study using routinely collected data held in the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank. We will link the Looked After Children dataset with family justice (Cafcass Cymru) data on section 31 proceedings, to explore pathways through the care and family justice systems for infants aged <1 year entering care in Wales between 2012 and 2019. We will follow up each child for two years from the date of their entry into care to track legal outcomes (final legal orders) and placement outcomes (placement type, number of placements, and re-entry into the care system). ResultsDescriptive statistics will include frequencies and proportions of infants who initially enter the care system via voluntary arrangements (section 76) and care proceedings (section 31), by age, year, local authority, and category of need. We will describe the proportion and characteristics of those with voluntary arrangements who later become the subject of care proceedings, and the distribution of final legal orders and placement types by initial route of entry to care. We will use funnel plots to investigate variation between local authorities. We will use linear regression to test for statistically significant differences in the proportions of infants entering care via the two different routes over time, and chi-square tests to investigate associations between mode of entry and infant characteristics and outcomes. ConclusionThere is limited information on the care journeys of children in Wales at the individual level. This study will help us to understand the patterns of use of voluntary arrangements for infants over time, the proportion subsequently involved in section 31 applications and the impact on outcomes for children.

Litigation involving sports-related spinal injuries: a comprehensive review of reported legal claims in the United States in the past 70 years

Sports-related spinal injuries can be catastrophic in nature. Athletes competing in collision sports (e.g. football) may be particularly prone to injury given the high-impact nature of these activities. Due to the oftentimes profound impact of sports-related spinal injuries on health and quality-of-life, they are also associated with a substantial risk of litigation. However, no study to date has assessed litigation risks associated with sports-related spinal injuries. A better understanding of the risk factors surrounding these legal claims may provide insights into injury prevention and other strategies to minimize litigation risks. In addition, it may allow the spine surgeon to better recognize the health, socioeconomic, and legal challenges faced by this patient population. To provide a comprehensive assessment of reported legal claims involving sports-related spinal injuries, including a comparative analysis of legal outcomes between collision and non-collision sports. To discuss strategies to prevent sports-related spinal injuries and minimize litigation risks. Retrospective review. Athletes experiencing spinal injuries during sports. Outcomes included verdict outcome (defendant vs. plaintiff), legal claims, injuries sustained, clinical symptoms, and award payouts. The legal research database Westlaw Edge (Thomson Reuters) was queried for legal claims brought in the United States from 1950 to 2021 involving sports-related spinal injuries. Verdict or settlement outcomes were collected as well as award payouts, time to case closure, case year, and case location. Demographic data, including type of sport (ie collision vs. non-collision sport) and level of play were obtained. Legal claims, spinal injuries sustained, and clinical symptoms were also extracted. Furthermore, the nature of injury, injured spinal region, and treatment pursued were collected. Descriptive statistics were reported for all cases and independent-samples t-tests and chi-square tests were used to compare differences between collision and non-collision sports. Of the 840 cases identified on initial search, 78 met our criteria for in-depth analysis. This yielded 62% (n=48) defendant verdicts, 32% (n=25) plaintiff verdicts, and 6% (n=5) settlements, with a median inflation-adjusted award of $780,000 (range: $5,480-$21,585,000) for all cases. The most common legal claim was negligent supervision (n=38, 46%), followed by premises liability (n=23, 28%), and workers' compensation/no fault litigation (n=10, 12%). The most common injuries sustained were vertebral fractures (n=34, 44%) followed by disc herniation (n=14, 18%). Most cases resulted in catastrophic neurological injury (n=37, 49%), either paraplegia (n=6, 8%) or quadriplegia (n=31, 41%), followed by chronic/refractory pain (n=32, 43%). Non-collision sport cases had a higher percentage of premises liability claims (41% vs. 11%, p=.006) and alleged chronic/refractory pain (53% vs. 28%, p=.04). Conversely, collision sport cases had a higher proportion of workers' compensation/no fault litigation (23% vs. 4%, p=.03) and cases involving disc herniation (29% vs. 9%, respectively; p=.04). Sports-related spinal injuries are associated with multiple and complex health, socioeconomic, and legal consequences, with median inflation-adjusted award payouts nearing $800,000 per case. In our cohort, the most commonly cited legal claims were negligent supervision and premises liability, emphasizing the need for prevention guidelines for safe sports practice, especially in non-professional settings. Cases involving athletes participating in non-collision sports were significantly associated with claims citing chronic/refractory pain, highlighting the importance of long-term care in severely injured athletes.

MCCLESKEY ACCUSED Justice Powell and The Moral Price of Institutional Pride

<i>MCCLESKEY</i> ACCUSED Justice Powell and The Moral Price of Institutional Pride

The battle for 5Pointz and signifying regimes: desirable subjects, hierarchies of value, and legitimizing state power

ABSTRACT This article offers an analysis of semiotic regimes that accompanied the redevelopment of 5Pointz and the ensuing civil lawsuits. Located in Queens, New York, 5Pointz was a building owned by GM Realty, who allowed Jonathan Cohen to curate graffiti works on its exterior and interior walls from 2002 through to 2013. I identify the ideological significance of three semiotic regimes generated by the 5Pointz saga. First, I treat “landed capital” (property development, growth machines) and “cultural commodification” (the art world) as observing systems that were central to constructing the meaning of the 5Pointz closure and litigation. These observational vantage points relied on a dichotomous logic involving desirable and undesirable subjectivity, but located key actors in distinct ways. Second, the legal outcome was often construed as a “major victory for artists.” However, portraying the damages awarded as an unequivocal victory normalizes hegemonic constructions of value wherein the activities of capitalism’s major players are accorded more worth than any other human activity. Finally, I focus on portraying the conflict between graffiti writers and landed capital as a “David and Goliath” battle. Signifying the conflict in such a manner (mis)construes the sovereign state as an impartial actor that adjudicates between competing rights claims.

The Legal Infrastructure for Hybrid Organizations: The Case of Portugal, 1990-2019

In this study we present, measure, and test a theoretical model of how the legal infrastructure for hybrid organizations emerged from the parliamentary system of Portugal over three decades. To develop this model, we begin with an organized anarchy representation, describing the policy process as the confluence of four distinct streams: choice situations, participants, problems, and solutions. We suggest a theoretical distinction between anarchic policy processes, along the lines of the garbage can, where the streams remain relatively independent, and more structured policy processes, where institutional and political orders create more interdependence among the streams. We develop hypotheses that link the observed outcomes of legal deliberations, categorized as oversight, flight, or resolution, with a characterization of the policy process as more anarchic or more structured. Our findings suggest that the process is more structured than anarchic and show that mechanisms related to a dynamic mix of temporal, institutional, and political orders significantly affect legal outcomes. We close with a review of the findings and some implications for institutional theories of regulation and managers and advocates of hybrid organizations.

Using deep learning to predict outcomes of legal appeals better than human experts: A study with data from Brazilian federal courts

Legal scholars have been trying to predict the outcomes of trials for a long time. In recent years, researchers have been harnessing advancements in machine learning to predict the behavior of natural and social processes. At the same time, the Brazilian judiciary faces a challenging number of new cases every year, which generates the need to improve the throughput of the justice system. Based on those premises, we trained three deep learning architectures, ULMFiT, BERT, and Big Bird, on 612,961 Federal Small Claims Courts appeals within the Brazilian 5th Regional Federal Court to predict their outcomes. We compare the predictive performance of the models to the predictions of 22 highly skilled experts. All models outperform human experts, with the best one achieving a Matthews Correlation Coefficient of 0.3688 compared to 0.1253 from the human experts. Our results demonstrate that natural language processing and machine learning techniques provide a promising approach for predicting legal outcomes. We also release the Brazilian Courts Appeal Dataset for the 5th Regional Federal Court (BrCAD-5), containing data from 765,602 appeals to promote further developments in this area.

U.S. Supreme Court limits emotional distress damages in Title IX and other cases

A recent U.S. Supreme Court case is making waves in higher education law. Although the case didn't involve a student, faculty member, or university, the ruling could shape legal outcomes for higher education cases involving Title VI, Title IX, and the Rehabilitation Act.

A Sketch of the Concept of ‘Unneutrality’

Legal and non-legal scholarship examines extensively the impact of subjective conditions such as biases on international judicial decision-making. This paper shifts the focus on the impact of objective conditions on international judicial decision-making with similar effects and introduces the concept of ‘unneutrality’ as a model for investigating such conditions. Specifically, the unneutrality of international adjudication requires the anchoring of decisive arguments in basic legal concepts and ideals, which constrains decision-making and leads to the appearance of favouring certain stakeholders. Considering that different legal interpretations and outcomes are often attributed to biases, the paper hypothesizes that what is usually perceived as an appearance of bias is reflected in the anchoring of decisive arguments in basic legal concepts and ideals with direct effects on outcomes. The paper reviews a sample of decisions rendered by the European Court of Human Rights and investment treaty arbitral tribunals dealing with jurisdictional matters, and finds a direct link between anchors and outcomes, whose favourability to certain stakeholders is often alleged to reflect biases. While the choice of anchors can be influenced by subjective conditions such as biases, the need for a choice is rather objective. The paper therefore suggests that the study of international judicial decision-making should take into account the impact of objective conditions relating to the structural attributes of the international legal order, and their ability to produce the effects that have been so far attributed almost exclusively to subjective conditions.

Examining Disparities in Case Dispositions and Sentencing Outcomes for Domestic Violent Extremists in the United States

This study examines how strength of ideology, victim status, and other factors shape prosecutorial and sentencing decisions in cases of far-right extremist homicide. We draw from multiple conceptual frameworks to understand how assessments of defendants’ blameworthiness, crime seriousness, and other practical constraints influence the severity of legal outcomes. Our analysis of data from the United States Extremist Crime Database finds that while demographic attributes of homicide participants have little influence on legal outcomes, strong affiliations to domestic extremism and indicators of crime seriousness and risk significantly predict harsher treatment of defendants. We contextualize our findings within the broader criminological sentencing literature and discuss their implications for understanding how the American criminal justice system responds to domestic violent extremism.

Snatching Legal Victory: LGBTQ Rights Activism and Contestation in the Arab World

Abstract This article examines the relationship between emergent LGBTQ movements and the state in the Arab world over the past two decades. Focusing on the efforts of various LGBTQ social movements to confront the criminalization of homosexuality in the Arab region, the article puzzles over a cascade of legal victories for LGBTQ rights advocates in Lebanon in recent years in spite of a hostile justice sector mired with corruption. It interrogates a set of prevalent assumptions about the effect of regime type (democracy v. authoritarianism) on gay rights activism and litigation. This article explains how some LGBTQ Arab movements have successfully relied on strategic litigation to confront criminalization laws while others have had less success in pursuing overtly confrontational approaches. The paired comparison between Tunisia and Lebanon shifts our focus back to the agency of judges and social movement leaders in shaping legal outcomes for LGBTQ citizens.

Investigating the Legal Discourse of Bill Clinton’s Impeachment Trial

This paper presents a legal discourse analysis of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial held in 1998. The paper’s main objective is to explore the different meanings communicated by the dexterous use of some lexical and pragmatic strategies used by discourse interlocutors involved in the trial. More specifically, the article offers a linguistic study of the testimony and statements of President Bill Clinton relating to his impeachment trial. The paper focuses on three main analytical dimensions: word selection, power relations, and questioning and answering, and the way these strategies influence the discourse participants’ conversational performance in the selected trial. To this end, this study draws on a legal discourse analysis approach as discussed by Coulthard (2013) and Mey (2016), focusing on lexicalization, the notion of power, and the use of questions and answers in courtroom settings. The overarching research question is: What are the different ideological and pragmatic meanings targeted beyond the use of selected words during the trial? Results reveal that language is a powerful tool in courtroom testimonies as it helps to extract information, verify evidence, draw legal outcomes, and encode and/or decode the underpinning meanings of courtroom discourse participants. These, in turn, serve to support or defy evidence and ultimately lead to issue a legally just decision.

Vehicular heatstroke: how do extralegal factors influence perceptions of blame, responsibility, forgiveness and punishment?

ABSTRACT There is very little empirical evidence about how vehicular heatstroke cases are treated by the criminal justice system. Previous research demonstrates a wide disparity in legal outcomes for cases involving vehicular heatstroke, ranging from acquittals to charges of child neglect or murder. To better understand how specific factors could potentially impact justice outcomes for vehicular heatstroke cases, two experiments were designed. In Experiment 1, participants (n = 146) read a scenario involving an infant hot car death, where the mother's workplace (bar or church) and perceived parenting character (perceived as a bad parent or good parent) were manipulated. In Experiment 2, participants (n = 161) read a scenario where the parent's sex (mother or father) and parenting character were varied. The results from both experiments indicated that participants were more likely to assign responsibility for the child's death when the parent was perceived as having a bad parenting character. It was also found (in Experiment 2) that participants were more likely to forgive the parent with a bad parenting character if they were a mother rather than a father. These findings suggest that extralegal factors could influence legal decisions for vehicular heatstroke cases.

U.S. Supreme Court limits emotional distress damages in Title IX and other cases

A recent U.S. Supreme Court case is making waves in higher education law. Although the case didn't involve a student, faculty member, or university, the ruling could shape legal outcomes for higher education cases involving Title VI, Title IX, and the Rehabilitation Act.

Predicting Indian Supreme Court Judgments, Decisions, or Appeals

Abstract Legal predictive models are of enormous interest and value to legal community. The stakeholders, particularly, the judges and attorneys, can take the best advantages of these models to predict the case outcomes to further augment their future course of actions, for example speeding up decision making, support arguments, strengthening the defense, etc. However, accurately predicting the legal decisions and case outcomes is an arduous process, which involves several complex steps—finding suitable bulk case documents, data extracting, cleansing and engineering, etc. Additionally, the legal complexity further adds to its intricacies. In this paper, we introduce our newly developed Machine Learning (ML)-enabled legal prediction model and its operational prototype, eLegPredict, which successfully predicts the Indian supreme court decisions. The eLegPredict is trained and tested over 3072 supreme court cases and has achieved 76% accuracy (F1-score). The eLegPredict is equipped with a mechanism to aid end users, where as soon as a document with new case description is dropped into a designated directory, the system quickly reads through its content and generates prediction. To our understanding, eLegPredict is one of the first few legal prediction models trying to predict Indian supreme court decisions.

Medical malpractice in robotic surgery: a Westlaw database analysis.

Malpractice claims involving robot-assisted surgical procedures have increased more than 250% in the past 7 years compared to the seven years prior. We examined robotic surgery malpractice claims to identify trends in claimed liabilities, describe legal outcomes, and determine strategies to minimize future litigation. The Westlaw legal database was queried retrospectively for U.S. state and federal trials regarding robot-assisted surgical procedures from 2006 to 2013 and 2014 to 2021. Data abstracted from verdict reports included year, state, court type, defendant specialty, procedure performed, claimed injuries and liabilities, verdict, and damage amount awarded. Sixty-one cases across 25 states were identified, 16 cases between 2006 and 2013, and 45 from 2014 to 2021. Among those 45 cases, defendant verdicts predominated (n = 35, 77.8%), with only four plaintiff verdicts (8.9%) and six settlements (13.3%). Overall, 169 liabilities were claimed, most commonly negligent surgery (82.2%), misdiagnosis/failure to diagnose (46.7%), delayed treatment (35.6%), and lack of informed consent (31.1%). Thirteen cases resulted in indemnity payments (mean = $1,251,274), with damages ranging from $10,087 (infection and retained foreign body) to $5,008,922 (patient death). Hysterectomy (n = 19, 42.2%) was the most commonly litigated surgery, followed by prostatectomy (n = 5) and hernia repair (n = 4). The most litigated specialties were obstetrics/gynecology (48.9%), general surgery (28.9%), and urology (15.6%). Malpractice litigation in robot-assisted surgery is infrequent. As robotic procedures become more commonplace, surgeons must keep common liabilities in mind, as there are valuable and actionable lessons to be learned from these cases. Malpractice reform, continuing medical education activities, and improved informed consent protocols may help minimize future litigation.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11701-022-01417-6.

Individualism and women's economic rights

Individualism is associated with an emphasis on personal liberty and self-determination, values that reduce support for patriarchal norms and increase gender equality. Here, we investigate whether individualism affects women's economics rights, a key institutional determinant of the economic opportunities available to women. We provide evidence of an economically and statistically significant association between individualism and the de facto level of women's economic rights. This result is robust to a variety of controls, including per capita income, women's educational attainment, oil production, historical determinants of patriarchal culture, and the quality of legal and political institutions. In addition, we present evidence that this association is causal, drawing on instruments motivated by roles of climate and disease in cultural evolution. Finally, we show that individualism's influence on women's economic rights is magnified in democratic and common law countries, suggesting that democracies and common law systems channel cultural preferences into legal outcomes.

COVID-19 is a “Yellow Peril” Redux: Immigration and Health Policy and the Construction of the Chinese as Disease

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans have endured a stark rise in&nbsp;discrimination, harassment, and violence. Public discourse regarding COVID-19 has also been filled with anti-Asian and xenophobic rhetoric, including former President Donald Trump’s usage of racially charged epithets like “China Virus” and “Kung Flu.” However, this is not the&nbsp;first time that Asian Americans, and specifically Chinese Americans, have been condemned as a public health threat. In the late 1800s, Chinese immigrants were stereotyped as the “Yellow Peril” and dirty disease carriers amidst growing anti-Chinese sentiment, culminating in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Additionally, San Francisco Chinatown was intentionally and unfairly targeted by public health officials in attempts to purge the bubonic plague at the turn of the&nbsp;century. While court cases like&nbsp;Wong Wai v. Williamson&nbsp;(1900) and&nbsp;Jew Ho v. Williamson&nbsp;(1900) determined that such public health campaigns violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s&nbsp;Equal Protection Clause by singling out Chinese individuals, their legal outcomes do not represent the overall social consensus, both historically and today. Thus, our current moment of surging anti-Asian rhetoric and racism must be contextualized within America’s long history of&nbsp;branding Asian and Chinese people as unwanted, filthy vectors of contagion to be excluded. This paper argues that the uptick in anti-Asian racial violence during the COVID-19 pandemic is a direct extension of xenophobic scapegoating, racial formation, and sociocultural representation&nbsp;of Chinese immigrants as harbingers of disease that rationalized the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act&nbsp;and San Francisco’s racist public health measures in 1900. Ultimately, I argue that America's&nbsp;historical intersection of exclusionary immigration law and discriminatory health policy set the stage for COVID-19 to play out as a “Yellow Peril” redux.

Book Review: The Merger Puzzle

In tax law we generally do not question the utility and function of rules. As a matter of convenience and, perhaps, as a matter of conviction, we usually assume that law determines outcomes in a more or less linear fashion. This assumption of tax law's determinacy allows us to get on with the business of tax and with the theory of tax. If the rules are determinate, it is appropriate to consider how the rules apply to a given case and to consider whether the rules should be changed to bring about some improvement in legal outcomes. In an earlier article, I broadly defended tax law's determinacy while suggesting that we should have greater acceptance in our rule making for the inevitable role of judgment in the application of law to facts.' In that article I took particular note of two aspects of tax thought that can contribute to indeterminacy: the rule maker's search for "symmetry and wholeness in the law," and the planner's search for "certainty and narrow truth."

Cycling under the influence of alcohol-criminal offenses in a German metropolis

IntroductionReal or simulated cycling tests under the influence of alcohol might be biased by laboratory settings. Accident analyses consider incidents with injuries only. Herein, criminal offenses consisting of drunk cycling are evaluated in detail to fill this gap.Material and methodsAll police-recorded cases of cycling under the influence of alcohol that took place in Düsseldorf, Germany, from 2009 to 2018 were identified. A total of 388 respective prosecutor’s files were available for analyses.ResultsMean blood alcohol concentrations were approximately 2 g/kg in both men and women. Men were overrepresented (6:1). Almost 60% of the cases were recorded between Friday and Sunday (the “weekend”). The average blood alcohol concentration (BAC) at night (01:00–05:59) was 0.39 g/kg lower than that during the day (06:00–17:59). Drinking after cycling allegations appear almost irrelevant among (German) cyclists. On average, the legal outcomes show 33 daily rates (median: 30). Additionally, the presented data raise doubts about whether the utilized medical tests or the ways in which they are carried out reliably discriminate between different grades of intoxication. Negative tests did not exclude high BACs, nor did positive tests correlate well with BACs.Discussion/ConclusionIn practice, CUI is seen with BACs above 1.60 g/kg in most cases. BACs below 1.60 g/kg either seem to be a minor problem or they have been incompletely addressed thus far. In summary, to be prosecuted, drunk cyclists have to ride their bikes in either a highly insecure or rude manner or they must cause an accident.

The legal geography of prior appropriation water rights: Political ecology and the defeat of the Las Vegas Pipeline

As the Western United States becomes increasingly arid from climate change, cities across the region are finding new ways to increase and conserve water resources. Some municipalities have proposed implementing rural-to-urban water transfers to augment urban water supplies. This was the case in Las Vegas, Nevada, where the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) proposed the Groundwater Development Project–informally known as the Las Vegas Pipeline–which sought to pump groundwater from eastern Nevada, transporting it 300 miles south to Las Vegas. In this article, I explore how SNWA’s pipeline project was contested by the environmental nonprofit organization the Great Basin Water Network (GBWN), a grassroots coalition of ranchers, environmentalists, and tribal members. Highlighting how GBWN successfully used water law based on the doctrine of prior appropriation–discursively, in practice, and as a legal strategy–I illustrate how SNWA’s project was defeated in March of 2020, after decades of activism and litigation. Drawing from legal geography and political ecology, this article illustrates how structure (in the form of law), and agency (in the form of activism), converge to affect legal outcomes over water resources and conflict in the Western U.S. Last, by highlighting the adverse effects of rural-to-urban water transfers, this essay contributes to discussions about more equitable forms of water governance between rural and urban governments, while offering insights into water rights based on private property by critically examining the doctrine of prior appropriation.