Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Items from 1 to 20 out of 451 results

article

Doing Wrong Without Creating Harm

John M. Darley, Lawrence M. Solan, Matthew B. Kugler, Joseph Sanders

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 1 > 30 - 63

We investigate lay intuitions about the appropriate compensatory and retributive consequences of a wrongdoer putting another in harm's way when harm either does or does not result. Compensation tracked whether the harm actually occurred, though when harm has not yet occurred but might, participants prefer an escrow‐like solution in which money will be available to the victim only if the risk matures...

article

Reply to “The Effects of ‘Early Offers’ in Medical Malpractice Cases: Evidence from Texas”

Joni Hersch, Jeffrey O'Connell, W. Kip Viscusi

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 1 > 164 - 173

This article is a reply to the critique by Black, Hyman, and Silver (BHS) of our 2007 Journal of Legal Studies article, “An Empirical Assessment of Early Offer Reform for Medical Malpractice.” The early offer reform gives insurers the option of making an early offer that will expedite payment of claimants' economic losses and reasonable attorney fees. Using data on closed medical malpractice claims...

article

Executions, Deterrence, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities

Franklin E. Zimring, Jeffrey Fagan, David T. Johnson

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 1 > 1 - 29

We compare homicide rates in two quite similar cities with vastly different execution risks. Singapore had an execution rate close to one per million per year until an explosive 20‐fold increase in 1994–1995 and 1996 to a level that we show was probably the highest in the world. Then, over the next 11 years, Singapore executions dropped by about 95 percent. Hong Kong, by contrast, had no executions...

article

Why ADR Programs Aren't More Appealing: An Empirical Perspective

Michael Heise

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 1 > 64 - 96

Standard law and economic theory suggests that litigating parties seeking to maximize welfare will participate in alternative dispute resolution (ADR) programs if they generate a surplus. ADR programs claim to generate social surplus partly through promoting settlements and reducing case disposition time. Although most associate ADR programs with trial courts, a relatively recent trend involves appellate...

article

The Impact of Tort Reforms on the Sanctioning of Physicians by State Licensing Boards

Paul Jesilow, Julianne Ohlander

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 1 > 117 - 140

This article evaluates the impact of changes in tort laws on state medical licensing board actions in the United States, an area of study that has largely been overlooked in the tort reform debate. We employ negative binomial models with random effects to ascertain the impact of the passage of individual tort reforms, additional explanatory variables, and period effects on board licensing actions...

article

Fairness and the Willingness to Accept Plea Bargain Offers

Avishalom Tor, Oren Gazal‐Ayal, Stephen M. Garcia

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 1 > 97 - 116

In contrast with the common assumption in the plea bargaining literature, we show fairness‐related concerns systematically impact defendants' preferences and judgments. In the domain of preferences, innocents are less willing to accept plea offers than guilty defendants and all defendants reject otherwise attractive offers that appear comparatively unfair. We also show that defendants who are uncertain...

article

The Business of the Australian State Supreme Courts Over the Course of the 20th Century

Russell Smyth

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 1 > 141 - 163

This study examines the changing patterns in the appellate caseload of the six Australian state supreme courts over the course of the 20th century, based on cases contained in the official state reports at decade intervals between 1905 and 2005. The main findings include a decrease in the importance of family and estates and real property since the 1970s and a corresponding increase in the importance...

article

Attorney Fees and Expenses in Class Action Settlements: 1993–2008

Theodore Eisenberg, Geoffrey P. Miller

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 248 - 281

We report on a comprehensive database of 18 years of available opinions (1993–2008, inclusive) on settlements in class action and shareholder derivative cases in state and federal courts. An earlier study, covering 1993–2002, revealed a remarkable relationship between attorney fees and class recovery size: regardless of the methodology for calculating fees ostensibly employed by the courts, the class...

article

The Statistical Analysis of Judicial Decisions and Legal Rules with Classification Trees

Jonathan P. Kastellec

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 202 - 230

A key question in the quantitative study of legal rules and judicial decision making is the structure of the relationship between case facts and case outcomes. Legal doctrine and legal rules are general attempts to define this relationship. This article summarizes and utilizes a statistical method relatively unexplored in political science and legal scholarship—classification trees—that offers a flexible...

article

Judicial Discretion and Sentencing Behavior: Did the Feeney Amendment Rein in District Judges?

Beth A. Freeborn, Monica E. Hartmann

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 355 - 378

This research studies the impact of changes to judicial discretion on criminal sentencing outcomes. The 2003 Feeney Amendment restricted federal judges' ability to impose sentences outside of the Sentencing Guidelines and required appellate courts to review downward departures. Using data on all federal sentences between 1999 and 2004, we show that the amendment reduced downward departures by 5 percent...

article

O'Connell Early Settlement Offers: Toward Realistic Numbers and Two‐Sided Offers

Bernard Black, David A. Hyman, Charles Silver

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 379 - 401

In a prior article in this journal, we estimated the effect of an “O'Connell” early settlement offer program on payouts in medical malpractice litigation. Using Texas data and a base set of assumptions, we predicted that early offers would result in a 16 percent (20 percent) decline in payouts in currently tried (settled) cases. The overall decline came almost entirely from a sharp drop in payouts...

article

Labor Law, Judicial Efficiency, and Informal Employment in India

Sonja Fagernäs

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 282 - 321

This study assesses the effects of industrial disputes legislation and the dispute‐settlement process on informal versus formal employment in India. It uses indicators of pro‐worker court awards and court efficiency as well as amendments to the Industrial Disputes Act (IDA) at the level of Indian states. The state‐level IDA amendments are classified in relation to their pro‐worker stance and ability...

article

The Gendered Dimensions of Inheritance: Empirical Food for Legal Thought

Daphna Hacker

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 322 - 354

Inheritance is an extremely significant personal, familial, social, and legal phenomenon. Due to the significance of inheritance in wealth distribution and family relations, it is essential to uncover and discuss its gendered dimensions, which have benefited from surprisingly little empirical or legal attention. This article provides an updated state‐of‐the‐art review of the limited available empirical...

article

Individual Justice or Collective Legal Mobilization? Employment Discrimination Litigation in the Post Civil Rights United States

Laura Beth Nielsen, Robert L. Nelson, Ryon Lancaster

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 175 - 201

This article analyzes the outcomes of employment discrimination lawsuits filed in federal court from 1988 to 2003. It goes beyond previous research by examining case filings rather than published opinions and by treating case outcome as a sequential variable. Our analysis is informed by four theoretical models: formal legal, rational action/economic, legal mobilization, and critical realist. We employ...

article

Juror Beliefs About Police Interrogations, False Confessions, and Expert Testimony

Mark Costanzo, Netta Shaked‐Schroer, Katherine Vinson

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 2 > 231 - 247

Although there has been a rapid expansion in research on police interrogations and false confessions, little is known about the beliefs of potential jurors as to these issues. In collaboration with a trial research firm, we recruited 461 jury‐eligible men and women who matched the demographic characteristics of jury pools in several states. Surrogate jurors responded to questions and statements in...

article

Community Perceptions of Theft Seriousness: A Challenge to Model Penal Code and English Theft Act Consolidation

Stuart P. Green, Matthew B. Kugler

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 3 > 511 - 537

In the middle of the 20th century, criminal law reformers helped pass laws that consolidated previously distinct common‐law offenses such as larceny, embezzlement, false pretenses, extortion, blackmail, and receiving stolen property into a unified offense of theft, imposing uniform punishments for a diversity of methods of stealing and a diversity of types of property that could be stolen. The result...

article

Worthless Warnings? Testing the Effectiveness of Disclaimers in Mutual Fund Advertisements

Molly Mercer, Alan R. Palmiter, Ahmed E. Taha

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 3 > 429 - 459

More than $11 trillion is invested in mutual funds in the United States. Mutual fund investors flock to funds with high past returns, despite there being little, if any, relationship between high past returns and high future returns. Because fund management fees are based on the amount of assets invested in their funds, however, fund companies regularly advertise the returns of their high‐performing...

article

Creating Quality Courts

Frank B. Cross, Dain C. Donelson

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 3 > 490 - 510

Numerous studies examine the importance of legal systems, yet there is little scholarship on how nations can improve their legal systems. Nations might try to invest more resources, including increasing overall budgets, increasing judicial salaries, or expanding the number of judges and/or courts. We examine data for a set of European nations, with a focus on the most effective way to use national...

article

The Industrial Organization of the Japanese Bar: Levels and Determinants of Attorney Income

Minoru Nakazato, J. Mark Ramseyer, Eric B. Rasmusen

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 3 > 460 - 489

Using micro‐level tax data on attorney incomes in 2004 (when the law was changed to make it confidential), we analyze the industrial organization of the Japanese bar. These data suggest two sources of high income: an idiosyncratic return to talent in Tokyo and a compensating differential for the lack of amenities in the provinces. The most able would‐be lawyers (those with the highest opportunity...

article

The Public Regulation of Land‐Use Decisions: Criteria for Evaluating Alternative Procedures

Tom Tyler, David Markell

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies > 7 > 3 > 538 - 573

In this article we argue for an empirical governance approach—the use of public evaluations—as one basis for deciding whether and how to regulate decisions with public consequences. We propose a conceptual framework for evaluating public acceptability, notably that public judgments should be evaluated against five criteria: overall acceptability ex ante; robustness; consensus; procedurality; and their...

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Keywords

CRIMINAL JUSTICE (2)
JUDICIAL DECISION‐MAKING (2)
LAWYERS (2)
LITIGATION (2)
SOURCE CUES (2)
TORT REFORM (2)
US SUPREME COURT (2)
AMICUS CURIAE (1)
ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE (1)
ARRESTS (1)
ASSAULT WEAPONS (1)
AUTONOMY (1)
BAR EXAM (1)
BEHAVIORAL‐SELF‐MANAGEMENT (1)
BIAS BLIND SPOT (1)
BOARD INDEPENDENCE (1)
BODY‐WORN CAMERAS (1)
CAPITAL INVESTMENT (1)
CARDIAC TEST (1)
CARDIOLOGISTS' INTEGRATION (1)
CEO POWER (1)
CERTIFICATES OF RELIEF (1)
CHARGE DISPOSITIONS (1)
CHARGING DECISIONS (1)
CIVIL JUSTICE (1)
CIVIL PROCEDURE (1)
CIVIL RIGHTS (1)
CLEARANCE RATES (1)
COGNITIVE REFLECTION (1)
COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES OF CONVICTION (1)
COLLEGIALITY (1)
COMPARATIVE LAW (1)
COMPUTER FRAUD (1)
COMPUTER FRAUD AND ABUSE ACT (CFAA) (1)
COMPUTER TRESPASS (1)
CONFIRMATION BIAS (1)
CONTRACT DESIGN (1)
CONTRACTS (1)
COPYRIGHT (1)
CORONAVIRUS (1)
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE (1)
COURT CURBING (1)
COVID‐19 (1)
COVID‐19 PANDEMIC (1)
CRIMINOLOGY (1)
CURE (1)
CYBERCRIME (1)
DEFENSIVE MEDICINE (1)
DEFUND POLICE (1)
DELIBERATION (1)
DETERRENCE (1)
DIFFUSE SUPPORT (1)
DISCRIMINATION (1)
DISPUTE RESOLUTION (1)
DRUNK DRIVING (1)
DUAL‐PROCESS THEORY (1)
EFFICIENCY (1)
EMPIRICAL LEGAL STUDIES (1)
EMPLOYMENT (1)
EXPERIMENT (1)
FAMILIARITY (1)
FEDERAL COURTS (1)
FEDERAL JUSTICE STATISTICS PROGRAM (1)
FELT OBLIGATION (1)
FINANCIAL INCENTIVE (1)
FIREARMS (1)
FORECLOSURE LIQUIDATION (1)
FORMS (1)
FORUM SHOPPING (1)
GENDER (1)
GEOGRAPHY (1)
GLOBALIZATION (1)
GROUPS (1)
HEALTH POLICY (1)
HOME AFFORDABLE MODIFICATION PROGRAM (1)
HOMICIDE (1)
IDEOLOGY (1)
IMMIGRATION COURTS (1)
INDIVIDUALS (1)
INFORMATION COSTS (1)
INNOVATION (1)
INSTRUMENTAL VARIABLES (1)
INTEREST GROUPS (1)
INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION (1)
INTERNATIONAL LAW (1)
INTERNATIONAL LITIGATION (1)
INTERSECTIONALITY (1)
JD GRADUATES (1)
JOB SATISFACTION (1)
JUDICIAL FORECLOSURE PROCEDURE (1)
JUDICIAL IDEOLOGY (1)
JUDICIAL LEGITIMACY (1)
LANDLORD‐TENANT (1)
LAW GRADUATES (1)
LEAKS (1)
LEASES (1)
LEGAL PROFESSION (1)
LEGITIMACY (1)
LOCKDOWN ORDERS (1)
MALPRACTICE PRESSURE (1)
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INFONA - science communication portal

Journal of Empirical Legal Studies

Doing Wrong Without Creating Harm

Reply to “The Effects of ‘Early Offers’ in Medical Malpractice Cases: Evidence from Texas”

Executions, Deterrence, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities

Why ADR Programs Aren't More Appealing: An Empirical Perspective

The Impact of Tort Reforms on the Sanctioning of Physicians by State Licensing Boards

Fairness and the Willingness to Accept Plea Bargain Offers

The Business of the Australian State Supreme Courts Over the Course of the 20th Century

Attorney Fees and Expenses in Class Action Settlements: 1993–2008

The Statistical Analysis of Judicial Decisions and Legal Rules with Classification Trees

Judicial Discretion and Sentencing Behavior: Did the Feeney Amendment Rein in District Judges?

O'Connell Early Settlement Offers: Toward Realistic Numbers and Two‐Sided Offers

Labor Law, Judicial Efficiency, and Informal Employment in India

The Gendered Dimensions of Inheritance: Empirical Food for Legal Thought

Individual Justice or Collective Legal Mobilization? Employment Discrimination Litigation in the Post Civil Rights United States

Juror Beliefs About Police Interrogations, False Confessions, and Expert Testimony

Community Perceptions of Theft Seriousness: A Challenge to Model Penal Code and English Theft Act Consolidation

Worthless Warnings? Testing the Effectiveness of Disclaimers in Mutual Fund Advertisements

Creating Quality Courts

The Industrial Organization of the Japanese Bar: Levels and Determinants of Attorney Income

The Public Regulation of Land‐Use Decisions: Criteria for Evaluating Alternative Procedures

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