Complex scientific testimony: How do jurors make decisions?

Critics of the civil jury system question whether jurors can adequately evaluate complex expert testimony. Based on current models of research in persuasion, we hypothesized that when expert testimony is complex, factors other than content will influence persuasion. Participants, serving as mock jurors, watched a videotaped trial in which two scientists provided evidence on whether PCBs could have caused a plaintiff's illness. The complexity of the expert's testimony and the strength of the expert's credentials were varied in a 2×2 factorial design. After watching the videotape, mock jurors rendered a verdict and completed a number of attitude measures related to the trial. Overall, consistent with our prediction, we found that jurors were more persuaded by a highly expert witness than by a less expert witness, but only when the testimony was highly complex. When the testimony was less complex, jurors relied primarily on the content of that testimony, and witness credentials had little impact on the persuasiveness of the message.     

The World Trading System, the International Legal System and Multilevel Choice

Abstract:  This article develops a theory of multilevel choice of regulatory jurisdiction based on normative individualism, and suggests how certain features of the World Trade Organization (WTO) might be understood in terms of this theory. The WTO has some capacity for positive integration, as demonstrated in, for example, the harmonised minimum standards for intellectual property protection contained in the TRIPS agreement. Yet the WTO has generally not been used as a site for re-regulation in areas congruent with its de-regulation. However, in a limited way, and in particular contexts, it provides certain incentives for re-regulation at other sites. For example, both the SPS Agreement and the TBT Agreement encourage the formation of harmonised rules. These agreements require Member States to use international standards as a basis for their measures, with important exceptions.     

Corporations in Court: Big Business Litigation in U. S. Federal Courts, 1971–1991

This article provides an overview of federal litigation involving the largest 2,000 U. S. corporations over the period 1971–91. Reporting from a unique data set of the authors'construction, it finds that althugh the aggregate volume of business litigation grew during the 1970s and early 1980s, it has actually been declining in recent years in all major categories of cases; business-related litigation is heavily concentrated, with an extremely limited number of business "mega-litigants" accounting for most of the activity; this concentration is particularly evident in tort, with the result that the tort trend line outside the concentration is actually flat or declining; a good deal of the growth in litigation outside the tort area can be attributed to business itself; and big business wins overwhelmingly, as plaintiff and defendant, in cases that involve it. The general applicability of these findings is limited by the data's restriction to federal court litigation and the structure of the Integrated Federal Court Data Base from which the authors'data set was constructed. This granted, the report is by far the most comprehensive treatment of U. S. big business litigation to date, and its findings are strikingly at odds with the premises of much current policy discussion.     

THE CONSUMER INFORMATION OVERLOAD CONTROVERSY AND PUBLIC POLICY

It is widely believed that providing consumers with more product information produces "overload" and leads to confusion and poorer quality consumer decisions. The existence of a consumer information overload phenomenon has been used by marketers and others to argue against regulations and legislation mandating additional consumer information provision. The belief that a consumer information overload phenomenon exists is based largely on misinterpretations of research findings. The present paper reviews the consumer information overload research literature and concludes that existing research data support the contention that provision of more information, rather than producing overload, actually improves consumer decision making. Implications of the information overload research controversy for consumer policy makers are discussed.     

Delay reduction in the federal courts: Rule 50(b) and the Federal Speedy Trial Act of 1974

During the 1970s, 94 federal district courts implemented two major policy initiatives, Rule 50(b) of theFederal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the Federal Speedy Trial Act, that were designed in Washington to combat delay in the processing of federal criminal cases. Both of these initiatives established a national priority of delay reduction in criminal cases, encouraged local district court planning for delay reduction; established reporting procedures for monitoring local compliance, and provided for the determination of quantitative goals for the time to disposition of criminal cases. Neither initiative mandated specific activities for delay reduction; this determination was left to the discretion of local federal district courts. This research examines the effectiveness of Rule 50(b) and the Speedy Trial Act by constructing a 150-month time series of three measures of case processing time. A multiple-intervention time-series model found that both of these initiatives contributed to the dramatic reduction in the time to disposition in federal criminal cases. These effects persisted after controls for changes in case characteristics and judicial resources were introduced.Points of view expressed in this research are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position of the U.S. Department of Justice.     

A comparison of different delinquency measures derived from self-report data

The purpose of this research was to explore different ways of using self-report data to derive measures of juvenile delinquent behavior. The subjects were 161 public school children in the Omaha area, and 1,030 public school children and 665 adjudicated delinquents in the metropolitan areas of Baltimore, Indianapolis, and Phoenix. The Omaha youths responded to twenty-eight self-report items two times with an intervening period of three weeks and then rated the items for seriousness. Four measures of delinquency were derived from the data: frequency of activity, diversity of activity, seriousness of activity, and progression into delinquent behavior. The four measures were shown to be highly reliable and strongly intercorrelated; none was shown to be consistently better than the other three. Rated seriousness and reported frequency of behavior were highly negatively correlated, giving support to the use of frequency measures in building delinquency scales. All four scales showed differences within the Omaha sample as a function of sex, age, and birth order; but the differences were not always in the same directions when the four measures were used.