Social Architecture, Judicial Peer Effects and the Evolution of the Law: Toward a Positive Theory of Judicial Social Structure

Building upon the themes of this symposium, as well as a growing extant literature demonstrating the common law displays properties of a complex system, we believe existing theories of judicial decision-making and legal change would benefit from the concepts and techniques typically reserved for the study of complexity. Among possible approaches, network analysis offers one manner of representing the interactions between various entities across a complex system. Specifically, as applied to the path of the common law as well as theories of judicial decision-making, the networks paradigm helps evaluate the manner in which individual level judge choice maps to the judiciary\u27s aggregate doctrinal outputs. Of course, to the extent individual decision-making is driven by factors entirely intrinsic to a given case and a given jurist, the study of interactions is arguably trivial as the description of aggregate would reflect little more than the summation of individual preferences in a manner consistent with the institution\u27s aggregation rule. It is far more likely, however, that judicial choice is, at least in part, impacted by a combination of jurists who are socially prominent and socially proximate. While in some forms of network structure such peer effects are limited, in many states of the social world, they are supremely consequential. The precursor to evaluating potential doctrinal consequences is a classificatory effort designed to determine the micro implications of a given observed macro landscape. Section I provides a brief overview of complexity theory while simultaneously reviewing existing theories of judicial decision-making and legal change. Section II considers a series of classic network structures. Among the possibilities considered herein are random graphs, clustered graphs, as well models built upon processes of preferential attachment. Drawing from the larger complexity literature, Section II also describes the processes of self-organization likely responsible for generating each of these network structures. With an understanding of these possible states of the world in mind, Section III concludes with a consideration of judicial decision making, arguing the path of the law - from emergence to convergence - is conditioned, in part, upon the nature of self-organized social architecture that relevant decisional actors confront. In all, we believe architecture matters. Thus, our broad sweep of the possibility frontier should help identify the conditions under which network effects are present in the development of the common law

Hand disease in scleroderma: a clinical correlate for chronic hand transplant rejection

Chronic rejection remains a potential long-term consequence of hand composite tissue allotransplantation (CTA). Scleroderma has already been proposed as a model for chronic facial allograft rejection based on potential parallels of observed progression of disease and pathophysiology course. This study proposes a similar model for how chronic rejection may manifest itself in the context of hand CTA through the functional and psychological assessment of patients with scleroderma, should it occur

Left Hemisphere Specialization for Oro-Facial Movements of Learned Vocal Signals by Captive Chimpanzees

The left hemisphere of the human brain is dominant in the production of speech and signed language. Whether similar lateralization of function for communicative signal production is present in other primates remains a topic of considerable debate. In the current study, we examined whether oro-facial movements associated with the production of learned attention-getting sounds are differentially lateralized compared to facial expressions associated with the production of species-typical emotional vocalizations in chimpanzees.Still images captured from digital video were used to quantify oro-facial asymmetries in the production of two attention-getting sounds and two species-typical vocalizations in a sample of captive chimpanzees. Comparisons of mouth asymmetries during production of these sounds revealed significant rightward biased asymmetries for the attention-getting sounds and significant leftward biased asymmetries for the species-typical sounds.These results suggest that the motor control of oro-facial movements associated with the production of learned sounds is lateralized to the left hemisphere in chimpanzees. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the antecedents for lateralization of human speech may have been present in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans approximately 5 mya and are not unique to the human lineage

The measurement of handedness by preference and performance tests

Hand preference and hand proficiency were compared on 50 male subjects (30 self-classified left-handers and 20 self-classified right-handers) according to their responses to a 20 item questionnaire and their performances on a handwriting and a grip-strength task. Performance differences between the two sides for each group were not related to overall preference assessments but were positively associated with hand preferences on corresponding questionnaire items. Distributions of the performance differences between the two sides for the right- and left-handers were well separated for handwriting but completely overlapped for grip strength. Significant correlations between the performances on each side were recorded on both tasks. The results stress the importance of using the same criteria in making preference vs. performance comparisons and highlight the need to recognize and control the influence of previous training or experience