Amicus Brief: Kumho Tire v. Carmichael

This brief addresses the issue of jury performance and jury responses to expert testimony. It reviews and summaries a substantial body of research evidence about jury behavior that has been produced over the past quarter century. The great weight of that evidence challenges the view that jurors abdicate their responsibilities as fact finders when faced with expert evidence or that they are pro-plaintiff, anti-defendant, and anti-business. The Petitioners and amici on behalf of petitioners make a number of overlapping, but empirically unsupported, assertions about jury behavior in response to expert testimony, namely that juries are frequently incapable of critically evaluation expert testimony, are easily confused, give inordinate weight to expert testimony, are awed by science, defer to the opinions of unreliable experts, and, implicitly, that in civil trials juries tilt in favor of plaintiffs and against corporations

Court Review: Volume 44, Issue 1/2 – Decision Makers and Decision Recipients: Understanding Disparities in the Meaning of Fairness

Since World War II, psychologists have devoted considerable attention to understanding the factors that shape people’s satisfaction with the outcomes of social or economic exchanges—outcomes of events not unlike the encounters occurring between judges and litigants in civil and criminal courtrooms, encounters between police officers and civilians, or encounters between mediators and disputants in alternative dispute resolution centers throughout the United States every day. In one classic early study, it came as somewhat of a surprise when it was discovered that satisfaction was not easily explained by economic theories of human behavior. This finding launched an inquiry guided by theories and empirical research that has continued to this day. In this article, we offer an overview of the major developments in these theories and the accompanying research with an eye toward their implications for understanding the factors that shape citizens’ satisfaction with the U.S. legal system. Then, we note that the vast majority of this research has focused primarily on only a portion of the individuals who are engaged in the legal encounters that are taking place—the subordinates (the litigants, civilians, and disputants whose outcomes are being decided) rather than the authorities (the judges, police officers, and mediators who are deciding the cases), and we describe some recent research suggesting that the satisfaction of decision makers might be guided by different principles than the satisfaction of those who receive their decisions

Procedural justice evaluations in interrogations

Abstract not available

Procedural justice: theory and method

Since shortly after its start in the 1940s, the psychological research on social conflict and social justice has been heavily theory-driven. This chapter makes the assumption that this theory-driven approach importantly conditions the assessment of the research methods employed by the community of justice researchers focused on psychology and the law. It focuses on two desiderata for applied legal research: external validity and construct validity

Procedural justice

Abstract not available

'Acting fairly': Do instructions to engage in procedural justice prompt distributive justice?

Justice research suggests that decision-makers could exploit subordinates by "acting fairly", to persuade subordinates to accept unfair outcomes. In a 2 (bias: present, absent) x 2 (account: present, absent) between - subjects experiment, we tested whether instructing decision-makers to act fairly (provide accounts for decisions) increased the substantive fairness of their decisions. Participants (n=88) distributed a resource between two groups, towards which decision-makers were neutral (bias absent) or one of which the decision-maker was known to favour (bias present ). Bias affected distributions, but instructing decision -makers to provide an account had a remedial effect, indicating that acting fairly does prompt fairer outcome decisions

Authorities' perceptions of fairness as a cause of wrongful conviction

We hypothesised that interrogators would perceive coercive interrogations to be fairer than suspects and observers. Participants (n = 179) read descriptions of an interrogation procedure, in which five factors were manipulated: Role (Police, Suspect, Observer), Procedure (Coercive, Non-coercive), Confidence of interrogator (High, Low), Accuracy of procedure (High, Low), and Outcome (suspects innocent, suspects guilty). Compared to suspects and neutral observers, police officers considered coercive procedures and the outcomes they would produce to be fairer, and were more satisfied with coercive procedures and their outcomes. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for procedural justice theories and police interrogation behavior