An experimental investigation of procedural issues in complex tort trials

An investigation of the impact of innovations in civil trial procedure manipulated trial structure (unitary vs. separated trial issues), order of decisions (liability or causation first), and number of decisions made (one to four) in a simulated toxic tort trial. Juries gave verdicts and damage awards. Recordings were made of the juries' deliberations. The results showed significantly more verdicts in favor of the plaintiffs in unitary trials (causation, liability, and damages heard together) as opposed to separated trials. However, average damage awards were higher in the separated than in the unitary trial conditions. Juries assigned more responsibility to the defendant in the unitary trial. Juries also used the totality of the evidence to decide all issues, especially general causation, which contained the most ambiguous testimony. The performance of these simulated juries in complex litigation was discussed in terms of group and individual cognitive factors.     

A concept in search of a definition: The effects of reasonable doubt instructions on certainty of guilt standards and jury verdicts

Eighty (6-person) juries heard 1 of the 5 reasonable doubt instructions in a trial that either had strong evidence for guilt or favored acquittal. None of the instructions produced acceptable criteria of self-reported reasonable doubt, although instructions that informed juries to be firmly convinced (FC) elicited the highest standards of proof. The FC instructions yielded verdicts that tended to correspond with the evidence in both versions of the trial. FC juries focused proportionately more on the evidence and less on non-probative issues than juries given other instructions. Juries had lower self-reported standards of proof when the trial evidence was weak for conviction as opposed to when it was strong. The discussion addresses the surprisingly low self-reported standards of proof.     

The public costs of private blessings: Fundamentals of the economic role of government

The main thrust of this overview is to demonstrate how the shift of government authority over time—from a defense of the realm against foreign intruders to an adjudication of conflicting citizen claims—has created a new set of problems and challenges for the modern state in search of development. It is argued that the power of the state expands as traditional forms of economic rivalries and class claims weaken, and as recourse to legal decision-making becomes widely accepted by all social and economic sectors. Government has proven better able to satisfy existing claims than at initiating new forms of social relations. Experiences in a variety of economic structures thus argue for a continued interplay of public and private, federal and personal claims. Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08933. Among his major works on development theory and practice areThree Worlds of Development: The Theory and Practice of International Stratification (Oxford University Press, 1965, 1972), andBeyond Empire and Revolution: Militarization and Modernization in the Third World (Oxford University Press, 1982). He was founding editor ofStudies in Comparative International Development.