American Juries

American Juries
Author: Neil Vidmar
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2009-09-25
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1615929878

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.

Punitive Damages

Punitive Damages
Author: Cass R. Sunstein
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2008-12-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0226780163

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.

The Psychology of Juries

The Psychology of Juries
Author: Margaret Bull Kovera
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9781433827044

This volume summarizes what is known about the psychology of juries and offers a robust research agenda to keep scholars busy in years to come.

Juries, Lay Judges, and Mixed Courts

Juries, Lay Judges, and Mixed Courts
Author: Sanja Kutnjak Ivković
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 380
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Law
ISBN: 110892297X

Although most countries around the world use professional judges, they also rely on lay citizens, untrained in the law, to decide criminal cases. The participation of lay citizens helps to incorporate community perspectives into legal outcomes and to provide greater legitimacy for the legal system and its verdicts. This book offers a comprehensive and comparative picture of how nations use lay people in legal decision-making. It provides a much-needed, in-depth analysis of the different approaches to citizen participation and considers why some countries' use of lay participation is long-standing whereas other countries alter or abandon their efforts. This book examines the many ways in which countries around the world embrace, reject, or reform the way in which they use ordinary citizens in legal decision-making.

The Missing American Jury

The Missing American Jury
Author: Suja A. Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 263
Release: 2016-06-16
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1107055652

This book explores why juries have declined in power and how the federal government and the states have taken the jury's authority.

Juries and the Transformation of Criminal Justice in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Juries and the Transformation of Criminal Justice in France in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Author: James M. Donovan
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2010-02-01
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0807895776

James Donovan takes a comprehensive approach to the history of the jury in modern France by investigating the legal, political, sociocultural, and intellectual aspects of jury trial from the Revolution through the twentieth century. He demonstrates that these juries, through their decisions, helped shape reform of the nation's criminal justice system. From their introduction in 1791 as an expression of the sovereignty of the people through the early 1900s, argues Donovan, juries often acted against the wishes of the political and judicial authorities, despite repeated governmental attempts to manipulate their composition. High acquittal rates for both political and nonpolitical crimes were in part due to juror resistance to the harsh and rigid punishments imposed by the Napoleonic Penal Code, Donovan explains. In response, legislators gradually enacted laws to lower penalties for certain crimes and to give jurors legal means to offer nuanced verdicts and to ameliorate punishments. Faced with persistently high acquittal rates, however, governments eventually took powers away from juries by withdrawing many cases from their purview and ultimately destroying the panels' independence in 1941.

Design Juries on Trial. 20th Anniversary Edition

Design Juries on Trial. 20th Anniversary Edition
Author: Kathryn H. Anthony
Publisher:
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9780974845012

20th anniversary of this award-winning classic. Design Juries on Trial goes hand in hand with 2 apps for iPhone iPodTouch and iPad: 1) Design Student Survival Guide and 2) Student Survival Guide. Both available from Apple iTunes store. Keep this guide at your side! Learn how to survive and thrive in design studios--and how to prepare, present and evaluate design projects in innovative, more effective ways. Empower yourself with this book to navigate your way through design school. Learn how to manage your time, research your project, communicate effectively, produce winning graphic presentations, master technology, handle design studio stress, work with teams...and much more. Schedule your project, achieve work/life balance, and avoid last-minute panic and disaster before design studio deadlines. Brings you unique insights into the jury process, with the most exhaustive analysis of the jury system undertaken to date. Reveals the hidden processes that jurors use to evaluate design work. Directs you to key research resources. Provides a historical and comparative overview of design juries. Advocates an array of refreshing reforms of the jury system to share with design instructors. Features interviews with luminaries in architecture, landscape architecture and interior design including Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Richard Meier, Cesar Pelli, Robert A. M. Stern, and others. Based on extensive research with over 900 individuals including systematic observations and videos of juries, diaries of design students, and interviews and surveys of students, faculty, and practitioners conducted over a seven-year period. More successful work habits more effective interactions with clients, healthier relationships with co-workers and a more favorable public image are the rewards of the approach presented in Design Juries on Trial. By applying these principles, students can more successfully make the leap from school into practice, and practitioners can develop more productive relations with all involved in the design and approval process. Shattering myths, challenging traditional assumptions, and calling for sweeping changes in design education and practice, Design Juries on Trial unlocks the door to the mysterious design jury system--exposing its hidden agendas and helping you overcome intimidation, confrontation, and frustration. It explains how to improve the success rate of submissions to juries--whether in the academic setting, for competitions and awards programs, or for professional accounts--and how to reconstruct the jury system in both design education and professional practice. Architects, landscape architects, planners, and interior, industrial, and graphic designers--as well as others who shape design decisions--are sure to benefit from this resource. Developed by award-winning faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign based on years of experience learning things the hard way...but you don't have to...

You're the Jury

You're the Jury
Author: Norbert Ehrenfreund
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
Total Pages: 224
Release: 1992-07-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9780805019513

In the American judicial system, jurors hold an awesome responsibility. They have the power to grant millions of dollars in damages, to declare someone guilty or not guilty of a crime, and, in some states, to decide if another human being should live or die. The twelve real-life court cases presented here not only offer students a fascinating inside look at the court system, they give them the opportunity to step into the jury box and experience American justice in action. All the key factors of jury trials are discussed: expert witnesses, the allowance of certain kinds of evidence, claims of diminished capacity, and much more. Each case is followed by a series of interactive questions that test readers’ knowledge of the issues involved. And at the end of each chapter students will find out how the real jury decided—and why. As entertaining as it is educational, You’re the Jury offers a hands-on introduction to a unique aspect of the American legal system. Norbert Ehrenfreund has served as a judge for seventeen years in the Superior Court of California. Lawrence Treat is a founder and former president of the Mystery Writers of America, a three-time Edgar Allan Poe Award winner, and the author of the highly successful Crime and Puzzlement series.

Jury Nullification

Jury Nullification
Author: Clay S. Conrad
Publisher: Cato Institute
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2013-12-05
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1939709016

The Founding Fathers guaranteed trial by jury three times in the Constitution—more than any other right—since juries can serve as the final check on government’s power to enforce unjust, immoral, or oppressive laws. But in America today, how independent c