Mismatch in Law School

An important criticism of affirmative action policies in admissions is that they may hurt minority students who are thereby induced to attend selective schools. We use two comparisons to identify so-called “mismatch” effects in law schools, with consistent results. Black students attain better employment outcomes than do whites with similar credentials. Any mismatch effects on graduation and bar exam passage rates are confined to the bottom quintile of the entering credentials distribution, where selection bias is an important, potentially confounding factor. Elite law schools’ use of affirmative action thus does not appear to generate mismatch effects.

Litigant Resources and the Evolution of Legal Precedent

This paper develops an informational model of litigation in which court decisions are a function of legal representation. In this model, resource constraints determine how much parties expend on legal representation. The allocation of resources across parties influences court decisions in two important ways. First, in individual cases the party with greater resources can produce more information, thereby increasing her probability of a favorable decision by the court. Second, as the cost of litigation increases relative to parties’ resources, courts have less information upon which to make decisions. We model the evolution of precedent as a dynamic externality under stare decisis. These factors determine the evolution of legal precedent. In areas of law in which parties on a particular side have persistently greater resources, the law is likely to evolve in a direction that favors that side. The extent of information provided determines the variability of outcomes.

Detecting multiple authorship of United States Supreme Court legal decisions using function words

This paper uses statistical analysis of function words used in legal judgments written by United States Supreme Court justices, to determine which justices have the most variable writing style (which may indicated greater reliance on their law clerks when writing opinions), and also the extent to which different justices' writing styles are distinguishable from each other.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/10-AOAS378 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Evaluating the Role of Brown vs. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African Americans

In this paper we study the long-term labor market implications of school resource equalization before Brown and school desegregation after Brown. For cohorts born in the South in the 1920s and 1930s, we find that racial disparities in measurable school characteristics had a substantial influence on black males' earnings and educational attainment measured in 1970, albeit one that was smaller in the later cohorts. When we examine the income of male workers in 1990, we find that southern-born blacks who finished their schooling just before effective desegregation occurred in the South fared poorly compared to southern-born blacks who followed behind them in school by just a few years.

No Lawyer for a Hundred Miles?: Mapping the New Geography of Access of Justice in Canada

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers across Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers’ scope of practice varies based on a number of factors, and in several areas of law lawyers serve clients beyond their immediate locality. Our results suggest that debates about the geography of access should be premised on the goal of territorial justice as an equitable distribution of legal services rather than a narrower emphasis on the equal distribution of lawyers

Equality Before the Law? Evaluating Criminal Case Outcomes in Canada

One of our most strongly held ideals is that individuals receive equal treatment under the law. Incidents of wrongful conviction or wide disparities in sentencing, however, challenge this premise. While legal scholars have recently examined this premise, our understanding remains largely normative or anecdotal. Scholars have begun to identify factors that influence legal outcomes, yet this question has remained largely unexplored in Canada. This article seeks to advance this inquiry. Using unique data from both the Ontario courts and Legal Aid Ontario during 2007–2013, we find that outcomes in routine criminal cases vary in ways not summarily explained by differences in defendant or city characteristics. Cities differ in their use and expenditure of defendant legal representation in ways strongly correlated with outcomes, controlling for other factors. While only a first step, our article counsels strongly in favour of a systematic examination of case adjudication in Canada, and offers future avenues for research

Offer-of-Judgment Rules and Civil Litigation: An Empirical Study of Automobile Insurance Litigation in the East

Although their express purpose is to adjudicate disputes, courts by their institutional design encourage civil litigants to settle their differences without resorting to trial. Most civil systems impose filing fees, pleading requirements, and a highly formalized presentation of evidence; also, because of crowded civil dockets, courts typically require litigants to wait months, or even years, for their trial date.\u27 For these reasons, and because of the increasing costs of legal representation, it is not surprising that the majority of litigants settle before trial. Notwithstanding these measures, federal courts and most state courts have an additional mechanism to encourage settlement, generally known as an offer-of-judgment rule. Following the leads of Minnesota, Montana, and New York, the Supreme Court promulgated Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 68 (hereinafter Rule 68 ) in 1937. Briefly stated, the rule allows a defending party-at her discretion-to submit a formal settlement offer to the court as well as to the claimant. If the plaintiff does not accept the offer and does not ultimately recover an amount greater than the proposed settlement, then she is required to pay the defendant\u27s post-offer court costs

No Lawyer for a Hundred Miles? Mapping the New Geography of Access of Justice in Canada

Recent concerns about the geography of access to justice in Canada have focused on the dwindling number of lawyers in rural and remote areas, raising anxieties about the profession’s inability to meet current and future demands for localized legal services. These concerns have motivated a range of policy responses that aim to improve the education, training, recruitment and retention of practitioners in underserved areas. We surveyed lawyers in Ontario to better understand their physical proximity to clients and how, if at all, that proximity promotes access to justice. We find that lawyers\u27 scope of practice varies based on a number of factors, and in several areas of law lawyers serve clients beyond their immediate locality. Our results suggest that debates about the geography of access should be premised on the goal of territorial justice as an equitable distribution of legal services rather than a narrower emphasis on the equal distribution of lawyers