Where There's Smoke There's Fire

The heavy, acrid smoke wafted all around. The stench was steady and overpowering. There was no escape.     

A Norms Approach to Jury "Nullification:" Interests, Values, and Scripts

Juries and other lay tribunals are often justified because they leaven the law with community norms. Unfortunately, we do not have a particularly good theory of when and how juries substitute their normative judgments for the law. A first step in developing such a theory is to examine the nature of norms and the way jurors bring normative judgments to their task. In this article I compare and contrast different understandings of norms that currently are in vogue in the social sciences and then use these approaches to develop a more systematic understanding of when juries do and when they do not substitute their normative judgment for that of the law.     

Conspicuous by Its Absence

This year, I’m told, was a bit different:in the interest of not insulting millions of struggling Americans, Santa andhis reindeer touched down very lightly in the United States last month. New Year’sEve,     

Long Term Influences of Age–Education Transition on the Brazilian Labour Market

The objective of this study is to estimate the long term mean earnings of the male Brazilian population, taking into account the ageing process of the population and the increase in educational attainment. Using census data, household sample surveys, as well as population and education projections, estimates indicate that an ageing population and an increase in education will have a 2 percent impact on the annual growth of an average income in Brazil by 2050. The challenge for the future is to improve the proportion of the Brazilian population with completed college degrees.