Changing views of jury power

This article highlights the major events and empirical research in the continuing debate over the power and competence of the jury in civil and criminal trials. The concept ofjury nullification, the power of the jury to return a verdict based upon their moral conscience despite the evidence and the law, is used as a convenient filter to discuss the legal and behavioral assumptions about jury power and performance. The legal, historical, and even behavioral contexts reflect a bipolar theme in the level of trust Americans have exhibited towards the jury system. One pole reflects the notion that juries lack predictability and rationality in their verdicts and are moved by emotional concerns. Antipodally, juries have been thought to reflect an historical competence at applying common sense notions of equity and rationality to conflicted and ambiguous cases. This article traces the history of these two views of jury power and competence. A critical review of the empirical research that may inform the debate about the jury's competence in both criminal and civil arenas is provided.     

Democracy at Rest: Strategic Ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment

The Prohibition (Eighteenth, 1919) and repeal (Twenty-First,1933) amendments, which represent the only case of a later amendmentdirectly reversing an earlier one, were ratified by the twodifferent methods allowed by Article V of the United StatesConstitution: the former by state legislatures, the latter bystate conventions. This essay examines the legislatures-or-conventionsdichotomy as a microcosm of William Riker's treatment of liberalismand populism, with specific attention paid to the state conventionsthat ratified repeal. Using previously uncollected county datafrom the special elections to choose the 1933 convention delegates,this study demonstrates that invocation of the convention methodwas strategic, and intended not only to legitimate the Twenty-FirstAmendment but also to improve its chances of passage.     

Genotyping the future: scientists' expectations about race/ ethnicity after BiDil

The ongoing debate about the FDA approval of BiDil in 2005 demonstrates how the first racially/ethnically licensed drug is entangled in both Utopian and dystopian future visions about the continued saliency of race/ethnicity in science and medicine. Drawing on the sociology of expectations, this paper analyzes how scientists in the field of pharmacogenetics are constructing certain visions of the future with respect to the use of social categories of race/ethnicity and the impact of high-throughput genotyping technologies that promise to transform scientific practices.     

Minimizing culpability increases commission errors in a mock crime paradigm

Purpose. Empirical studies have demonstrated that feigning amnesia undermines memory for a mock crime. Not much is known about the effects of other culpability‐reducing strategies on memory. The present study investigated what strategies participants use when they are instructed to minimize culpability and if these strategies undermine memory to a similar extent as claiming amnesia. Methods. Participants performed a mock crime. Next, they were either instructed to minimize culpability for this mock crime in a simulated interrogation or asked to respond honestly. One week later, memory for the mock crime was tested. Results. None of the participants claimed amnesia when trying to minimize culpability. Conversely, all participants fabricated an alternative account of their role in the crime. Compared with responding honestly on both tests, fabricating an alternative story on the first test undermined memory for the mock crime in terms of commission errors. Correct recall was unaffected. It appeared that this effect was related to story length: the longer the fabricated story, the more the commission errors when telling the truth 1 week later. Conclusions. Fabricating an alternative story (i.e. lying) did not compromise correct recall, but induced more commission errors. The findings are discussed in terms of possible underlying mechanisms.     

Marriage patterns among unwed mothers: Before and after PRWORA

The promotion of marriage and two‐parent families became an explicit public policy goal with the passage of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Marriage has the putative effect of reducing welfare dependency among single mothers, but only if they marry men with earnings sufficient to lift them and their children out of poverty. Newly released data from the 2002 cycle of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), along with data from the 1995 cycle, allow us to compare pre‐ and post‐PRWORA differences in (1) cumulative marriage rates among unwed mothers, and (2) patterns of marital choice (that is, differences in characteristics of the men these mothers marry, such as their education and employment status). Overall, our results show that unwed childbearing is associated with lower marriage rates and marital quality. Difference‐in‐difference models show that welfare reform was not strongly associated with pre‐ and post‐welfare reform changes in marriage among nonmarital birth mothers, even among the most disadvantaged mothers. Compared with other women, nonmarital birth mothers also were less likely than other women to marry “economically attractive” men in the post‐welfare reform period. The success of marriage promotion initiatives may depend heavily on whether women themselves are “marriageable” and whether potential spouses have the ability to support a stable family life. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Horizontal mergers and efficiencies; theory and anti trust practice

Horizontal mergers can be challenged by anti trust authorities under both the US and EU Horizontal Merger Guidelines. More horizontal mergers are unconditionally approved in the US than in the EU. EU merger policy toughened after 1998 but became more in line with US practices after 2004. Differences in merger policies between the US and the EU can be explained by a greater scope of the efficiency argument in the US. The paper argues that firms only want to merge in oligopoly, if they expect to realize substantial merger specific efficiency gains, which counterbalances the price increasing effect of merger.