Author: Valerie P. HansPublisher: Springer
ISBN: 1489964630
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
Judging the Jury
Author: Valerie P. HansPublisher: Springer
ISBN: 1489964630
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 275
Book Description
The Jury Crisis
Author: Drury R. SherrodPublisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538109549
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 193
Book Description
Juries have a bad reputation. Often jurors are seen as incompetent, biased and unpredictable, and jury trials are seen as a waste of time and money. In fact, so few criminal and civil cases reach a jury today that trial by jury is on the verge of extinction. Juries are being replaced by mediators, arbitrators and private judges. The wise trial of “Twelve Angry Men” has become a fiction. As a result, a foundation of American democracy is about to vanish. The Jury Crisis: What’s Wrong with Jury Trials and How We Can Save Them addresses the near collapse of the jury trial in America – its causes, consequences, and cures. Drury Sherrod brings his unique perspective as a social psychologist who became a jury consultant to the reader, applying psychological research to real world trials and explaining why juries have become dysfunctional. While this collapse of the jury can be traced to multiple causes, including poor public education, the absence of peers and community standards in a class-stratified, racially divided society, and people’s reluctance to serve on a jury, the focus of this book is on the conduct of trials themselves, from jury selection to evidence presentation to jury deliberations. Judges and lawyers believe – wrongly – that jurors can put aside their biases, sit quietly through hours, days or weeks of conflicting testimony, and not make up their minds until they have heard all the evidence. Unfortunately, the human brain doesn’t work that way. A great deal of psychological research on jurors and other decision-makers shows that our brains intuitively leap to story-telling before we rationally analyze “facts,” or evidence. Weaving details into a narrative is how we make sense of the world, and it’s very hard to suppress this tendency. Consequently, a majority of jurors actually make up their minds before they have heard much of the evidence. Judges, arbitrators and mediators have similar biases. The Jury Crisis deals with an important social problem, namely the near collapse of a thousand year old institution, and proposes how to fix the jury system and restore trial by jury to a more prominent place in American society.
American Juries
Author: Neil VidmarPublisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615929878
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 428
Book Description
This monumental and comprehensive volume reviews more than 50 years of empirical research on civil and criminal juries and returns a verdict that strongly supports the jury system.
A Trial by Jury
Author: D. Graham BurnettPublisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0375727515
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210
Book Description
When Princeton historian D. Graham Burnett answered his jury duty summons, he expected to spend a few days catching up on his reading in the court waiting room. Instead, he finds himself thrust into a high-pressure role as the jury foreman in a Manhattan trial. There he comes face to face with a stunning act of violence, a maze of conflicting evidence, and a parade of bizarre witnesses. But it is later, behind the closed door of the jury room, that he encounters the essence of the jury experience — he and eleven citizens from radically different backgrounds must hammer consensus out of confusion and strong disagreement. By the time he hands over the jury’s verdict, Burnett has undergone real transformation, not just in his attitude toward the legal system, but in his understanding of himself and his peers. Offering a compelling courtroom drama and an intimate and sometimes humorous portrait of a fractious jury, A Trial by Jury is also a finely nuanced examination of law and justice, personal responsibility and civic duty, and the dynamics of power and authority between twelve equal people.
Punitive Damages
Author: Cass R. SunsteinPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226780163
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Book Description
Over the past two decades, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the number and magnitude of punitive damages verdicts rendered by juries in civil trials. Probably the most extraordinary example is the July 2000 award of $144.8 billion in the Florida class action lawsuit brought against cigarette manufacturers. Or consider two recent verdicts against the auto manufacturer BMW in Alabama. In identical cases, argued in the same court before the same judge, one jury awarded $4 million in punitive damages, while the other awarded no punitive damages at all. In cases involving accidents, civil rights, and the environment, multimillion-dollar punitive awards have been a subject of intense controversy. But how do juries actually make decisions about punitive damages? To find out, the authors-experts in psychology, economics, and the law-present the results of controlled experiments with more than 600 mock juries involving the responses of more than 8,000 jury-eligible citizens. Although juries tended to agree in their moral judgments about the defendant's conduct, they rendered erratic and unpredictable dollar awards. The experiments also showed that instead of moderating juror verdicts, the process of jury deliberation produced a striking "severity shift" toward ever-higher awards. Jurors also tended to ignore instructions from the judges; were influenced by whatever amount the plaintiff happened to request; showed "hindsight bias," believing that what happened should have been foreseen; and penalized corporations that had based their decisions on careful cost-benefit analyses. While judges made many of the same errors, they performed better in some areas, suggesting that judges (or other specialists) may be better equipped than juries to decide punitive damages. Using a wealth of new experimental data, and offering a host of provocative findings, this book documents a wide range of systematic biases in jury behavior. It will be indispensable for anyone interested not only in punitive damages, but also jury behavior, psychology, and how people think about punishment.
Handbook for trial jurors serving in the United States District Courts
Author: Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Instructions to juries
Languages : en
Pages : 16
Book Description
... The purpose of this handbook is to acquaint trial jurors with the general nature and importance of their role as jurors; explains some of the language and procedures used in court, and offers some suggestions helpful to jurors in performing their duty ...
When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, And Executioner: Justice In The Age Of Artificial Intelligence
Author: Katherine B ForrestPublisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811232741
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 159
Book Description
'Is it fair for a judge to increase a defendant's prison time on the basis of an algorithmic score that predicts the likelihood that he will commit future crimes? Many states now say yes, even when the algorithms they use for this purpose have a high error rate, a secret design, and a demonstratable racial bias. The former federal judge Katherine Forrest, in her short but incisive When Machines Can Be Judge, Jury, and Executioner, says this is both unfair and irrational ...' See full reviewJed S RakoffUnited States District Judge for the Southern District of New YorkNew York Review of Books This book explores justice in the age of artificial intelligence. It argues that current AI tools used in connection with liberty decisions are based on utilitarian frameworks of justice and inconsistent with individual fairness reflected in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. It uses AI risk assessment tools and lethal autonomous weapons as examples of how AI influences liberty decisions. The algorithmic design of AI risk assessment tools can and does embed human biases. Designers and users of these AI tools have allowed some degree of compromise to exist between accuracy and individual fairness.Written by a former federal judge who lectures widely and frequently on AI and the justice system, this book is the first comprehensive presentation of the theoretical framework of AI tools in the criminal justice system and lethal autonomous weapons utilized in decision-making. The book then provides a comprehensive explanation as to why, tracing the evolution of the debate regarding racial and other biases embedded in such tools. No other book delves as comprehensively into the theory and practice of AI risk assessment tools.
Unreasonable Doubt
Author: Norma ThompsonPublisher: Paul Dry Books
ISBN: 1589880722
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Book Description
"Part detective story, part social commentary, part intellectual autobiography, part philosophical analysis, this is a jury book unlike any other."—Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law and former Dean, Yale Law School "[Norma Thompson] teaches us, brilliantly and painlessly, why judging, as opposed to simply knowing, is an essential part of a responsible human existence, recounting the trials and crimes and moral dilemmas of antiquity and classical tradition in a stunningly original reading."—Abraham D. Sofaer, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, and former United States District Judge In 2001, Norma Thompson served on the jury in a murder trial in New Haven, Connecticut. In Unreasonable Doubt, Thompson dramatically depicts the jury's deliberations, which ended in a deadlock. As foreperson, she pondered the behavior of some of her fellow jurors that led to the trial's termination in a hung jury. Blending personal memoir, social analysis, and literary criticism, she addresses the evasion of judgment she witnessed during deliberations and relates that evasion to contemporary political, social, and legal affairs. She then assembles an imaginary jury of Tocqueville, Plato, and Jane Austen, among others, to show how the writings of these authors can help model responsible habits of deliberation.
Madam Foreman
Author: Amana CooleyPublisher: Phoenix Books
ISBN: 1614670811
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
For better or worse The People vs. O.J. Simpson served as a mirror of modern America. It was all there - wealth, fame, celebrity, sex, race, adultery, drugs, domestic abuse, and murder - acted out by a cast that cut across all segments of society in a drama that polarized the nation. And to witness it, all anyone had to do was turn on the television. As winter turned to spring and spring to summer, opinions formed and then hardened. Research polls reported deep divisions along racial lines and the opininon pages filled with commentary that tried to explain how so many could look at the same evidence and reach such starkly different conclusions. But what people saw in the trial of the century simply reflected their own backgrounds and beliefs. In the end, that was the most revealing verdict of all. Capturing the experiences of the jurors who decided this trial was not an easy feat. Throughout this book the insight and opinions of the primary narrators, Juror #230, foreperson Armanda Cooley; Juror # 98, Carrie Bess; and Juror #984, Marsha Rubin-Jackson, are expressed in their own words. Only they can, and do, reveal the view from the jury box." Phoenix Books is pleased to offer Madam Foreman in newly created ebook format which has been digitally enhanced to include a fully linked table of contents to ensure an enjoyable reading experience on all portable devices.
Judges and Judging in the History of the Common Law and Civil Law
Author: Paul A. BrandPublisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107018978
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 367
Book Description
Leading historical research analysing the history of judges and judging, allowing comparisons between British, American, Commonwealth and Civil Law jurisdictions.