Introduction to Public Trust and Confidence in the Courts

This special issue is fortunate in its timing. The topic of public perceptions of the courts is having a rare moment in the limelight thanks to the drama of Florida’s ballots and what can count as a vote (or what opportunities there are for recounting ballots) in the U.S. Presidential election. The outcome of the political election seemed to rest on successive decisions by the judicial system: in particular, Florida’s trial and appellate courts, the federal court of appeals, and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court. Each of these courts addressed the propriety of electoral ballot counts for Presidential candidates in various Florida counties. The apparent political nature of the legal decisions in virtually each case fueled concern about the solidity of public support for the judiciary. In particular, claims were made that the results were partisan and would cause an abrupt decline in public support for the courts and in the value given to the judiciary’s independence of other branches of government. Our initial call for papers for this special issue preceded the Florida events by more than a year. Nonetheless, the resulting issue is very relevant to the questions raised in news reports and debated in list-serves of social scientists and legal professionals interested in the law and legal institutions. What do the articles have in common? All seven articles are empirical. Six of the seven rely on data from surveys conducted in the United States and analyze opinion on “state and local courts” or “courts in your community” or “the courts of State X”. The U.S. Supreme Court, the staple of political science and sociological examination of American courts, is rarely mentioned. This may, in part, reflect, the availability of new data. Fifteen states have commissioned opinion surveys since 1995. In addition, in recent years three national surveys focused on state, but not federal, courts. There are other similarities among the articles. All seven studies refer to racial and ethnic diff erences in opinions about the courts and legal institutions, and four of the seven explicitly seek to explain those diff erences, including the sole non-U.S. study, a consideration of ethnic differences in Israel

The Emotional Dimension of Judging: Issues, Evidence, and Insights

Judicial emotions—their display in the courtroom, influence on judicial behavior, and ultimately, their impact on public trust in the judiciary—are under scrutiny as neuro-scientists and social scientists take a fresh look at judicial work and conduct. Emotions and their regulation raise important issues for the exercise of judicial authority, a role in which emotion is formally excised.1 What has been called “emotional labor” is one of several key concepts guiding empirical research and offering insights into how judges undertake their work.2 Other related or overlapping concepts include implicit bias, mindfulness, and procedural fairness. Judges have been introduced to these concepts and associated research through several articles published in the journal Court Review over recent years.3 One of these articles, an American Judges Association white paper titled “Minding the Court: Enhancing the Decision-Making Process,” highlights the degree to which these scientific insights are interrelated in their implications for judicial work.4 For example, consideration of these concepts and research initiatives has implications for judicial performance and the conduct of evaluations.

Litigation Outcomes in State and Federal Courts: A Statistical Portrait

U.S. Juries Grow Tougher on Plaintiffs in Lawsuits, the New York Times page-one headline reads. The story details how, in 1992, plaintiffs won 52 percent of the personal injury cases decided by jury verdicts, a decline from the 63 percent plaintiff success rate in 1989. The sound-byte explanations follow, including the notion that juries have learned that they, as part of the general population, ultimately pay the costs of high verdicts. Similar stories, reporting both increases and decreases in jury award levels, regularly make headlines. Jury Verdict Research, Inc. (JVR), a commercial service that sells case outcome information, often is the source of the stories. The stories highlight a major gap in our knowledge of the legal system. Reported aggregate data tend to be exaggerated or incorrect. For example, the figures reported in the Times article almost certainly inflate plaintiff success rates for 1989 and report a time trend that probably does not exist. In an era when court reform and tort reform are constantly on the public policy agenda, the need for accurate national data about the litigation system is more important than ever. This Article supplies the first comprehensive national assessment of litigation outcomes in state and federal courts. It uses data gathered by the National Center for State Courts and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. Both data sources are national in scope and derive their information directly from court clerks\u27 offices. The data portray a litigation system with case outcome patterns that differ from the patterns based on less comprehensive sources. The principal findings in this Article are: (1) plaintiff win rates in jury trials in state and federal court are strikingly similar; (2) award levels are much higher in federal court than in state court; (3) federal courts handle a relatively small fraction of the jury trials, but they distribute a surprisingly large percentage of the funds awarded in jury trials; (4) there probably is no significant time trend in plaintiff win rates in federal court jury trials; and (5) cases at almost every stage of disposition proceed more slowly through state courts than through federal courts

CRIME IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: STATISTICAL TRENDS AND THEIR INTERPRETATION. ESRI General Research Series Paper No. 102, November 1980

There is widespread agreement that crime in Ireland has become both more frequent and more costly in the past two decades. Crime is today a recognised social problem, its magnitude a subject of public concern and the possibilities for its amelioration a matter of public debate. The statistics which the Garda Siochana compile and publish are the only available evidence on which such discussion can be based, lifting the annual Report on Crime from relative obscurity to a prominence it is not really designed to hold. In newspaper coverage and in the D~iil, the annual increases, or, more rarely, decreases in the number of indictable offences are taken as a score card of garda failure and success, of disorder and public order. However, despite the interest in the problem of crime and in the crime statistics, there have been few research studies of the issues involved

The Predictability of Punitive Damages

Using one year of jury trial outcomes from 45 of the nation\u27s most populous counties, this article shows a strong and statistically significant correlation between compensatory and punitive damages. These findings are replicated in 25 years of punitive damages awards from Cook County, Illinois, and California. In addition, we find no evidence that punitive damages awards are more likely when individuals sue businesses than when individuals sue individuals. With respect to award frequency, juries rarely award punitive damages and appear to be especially reluctant to do so in the areas of law that have captured the most attention, products liability and medical malpractice. Punitive damages are most frequently awarded in business/contract cases and intentional tort cases. The frequency-of-award findings are consistent with all major studies of punitive damages

Juries, Judges, and Punitive Damages: An Empirical Study

This Article, the first broad-based analysis of punitive damages in judge-tried cases, compares judge and jury performance in awarding punitive damages and in setting their levels. Data covering one year of judge and jury trial outcomes from forty-five of the nation\u27s largest counties yield no substantial evidence that judges and juries differ in the rate at which they award punitive damages or in the central relation between the size of punitive awards and compensatory awards. The relation between punitive and compensatory awards in jury trials is strikingly similar to the relation in judge trials. For a given level of compensatory award, there is a greater range of punitive awards in jury trials than in judge trials. The greater spread, however, produces trivially few jury awards that are beyond the range of what judges might award in similar cases

Underpinning and benchmarking multi-scale models with micro- and nanoscale experiments

Predictive models of materials behavior depend on: accurate databases of constitutive material properties, identification of underlying deformation mechanisms, and the availability of experimentally measured benchmarks with which to compare. Micro- and nano-scale experiments can be used to facilitate collection of salient mechanical properties of individual phases at appropriate temperatures, chemistries and microstructural states. Coupling with TEM observations allows one to identify underlying deformation mechanisms and to imbibe models with the requisite fundamental physics and materials science. Simulations must be benchmarked with experiments, conducted at scale with relevant material volumes and identifiable microstructures. This presentation will outline efforts to characterize the constitutive behavior of materials, to identify deformation mechanisms, and to benchmark crystal plasticity simulations at appropriate length scales. Micro-scale experiments designed and conducted to complement crystal plasticity modeling of two different microstructural variants of Ni-base superalloys, polycrystalline Rene 88 and directionally solidified GTE 444, will be presented. If size-scale effect can be avoided, constitutive (single-crystalline) data may be obtained with micro-tensile tests at various orientations and temperatures. Moreover, preparing and testing specimens with reduced volumes and a finite number of grains allows for direct comparison with crystal plasticity simulations of stress-strain behavior as well as strain localization. With regard to the latter, digital image correlation (DIC) of spatially resolved surface displacements produces strain maps that provide a much more rigorous benchmark for crystal plasticity predictions than stress-strain curves. Using directionally solidified specimens allows for 2.5D microstructures (grains that extend through the thickness of the specimen) and greatly simplifies such comparisons. Moving beyond uniaxial tension, micro-bending resonance fatigue experiments provide an opportunity to measure the number of cycles, location, and microstructural features associated with slip, intragranular crack formation, and eventual transgranular crack growth. These experimental measures can in turn be used to inform and benchmark multi-scale fatigue simulations. Similarly, strain-controlled fracture experiments involving 2.5D unidirectional polymer matrix composites (PMC) have been developed and are being used to identify the microstructural features and fracture paths that govern delamination and fracture. The availability of orientation mapping techniques (EBSD, PACOM, TKD) now allows for nano-scale characterization of underlying deformation mechanisms and their relation to crystallographic microstructures and surrounding neighborhoods. Studies investigating the role of grain growth, twinning and dislocation plasticity will be presented. Special attention will be placed on attempts to measure intragranular strains that can be related to the accumulation of geometrically necessary dislocations (GNDs) and compared with crystal plasticity simulations. Support for these projects has been provided through the AFOSR and AFRL funded Center of Excellence on Integrated Materials Modeling and the DOE office of Basic Energy Sciences

Antecedents and consequences of inmate population characteristics in Illinois county jails / CAC No. 184

Bibliography; p. 101-103

Internal and contextual factors, knowledge processes and performance: From the Chinese provider's perspective

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.This paper explores the influences of two internal factors, i.e. supplier team’s IT-based skills and communication with client’s team, and two contextual factors, i.e. supplier team’s understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team, on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services from the Chinese provider’s perspective. Knowledge processes are characterized by knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management, and performance is measured by product success and personal satisfaction. Data have been collected in 13 companies in Xi’an Software Park, with 26 in-depth, semi-structured interviews held with top and middle managers, and 200 structured questionnaires distributed to knowledge workers who are involved in global sourcing projects. The results indicate that supplier team’s IT-based skills, communication with client’s team, cultural understanding of client’s culture and collaboration with client’s team are positively associated with knowledge process and performance. Also, knowledge sharing, knowledge-based coordination and expertise management are found to be crucial for those influential factors to function positively and contribute to the performance. The findings of this study suggest that the effects of key factors on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services appear to transcend the social and cultural differences; however, contextual factors seem to have more significant influences on knowledge processes and performance in global sourcing of IT services.National Natural Science Foundation of Chin