In criminal cases the task of the judge is to transform the uncertainty about the facts into the certainty of the verdict. In this experiment we examine the relationship between evidence of which the strength is known, subjective probability of guilt and verdict for abstract cases. We look at...

Using the universe of individual asylum cases in the United States from 2000-2004 and a difference-in-differences research design, we test whether Sept. 11, 2001 decreased the likelihood that applicants from Muslim-majority countries were granted asylum. Our estimates suggest that the attacks...

We examine the extent to which DNA exonerations can reveal whether wrongful conviction rates differ across races. We show that under a wide-range of assumptions regarding possible explicit or implicit racial biases in the DNA exoneration process (including no bias), our results suggest the...

This paper examines the impact of jury racial composition on trial outcomes using a unique dataset of all felony trials in Sarasota County, Florida between 2004 and 2009. We utilize a research design that exploits day-to-day variation in the composition of the jury pool to isolate quasi-random...

Judicial torture to extract information or elicit confession was a common practice in pre-modern societies, both in the East and the West. Moreover, often it was applied not only on the suspects, but also on the witnesses and plaintiffs as well. This paper proposes a positive theory for judicial...

Juries are a fundamental element of the criminal justice system. In this paper, we model jury decision-making as a function of three institutional variables: jury size, voting requirement, and the applicable standard of proof. Changes in jury size, voting requirements, and standards of proof...

This paper asks the question whether the courts have a role in shaping economic policy decisions at the EU level. It analyses which types of “economic” cases reached the courts during the financial crisis in the EU, and to what extent and with which arguments Member States' courts and the...

Ability-to-pay determinations are essential when governments use money-based alternative sanctions, like fines, to enforce laws. One longstanding difficulty in the U.S. has been the extreme lack of guidance on how courts are to determine a litigant's ability to pay. The result has been a...

Nationwide injunctions — injunctions extending beyond the immediate parties to litigation and beyond the geographic bounds of the issuing court's mandate — increasingly are used by lower federal courts to stop, alter, or condition the operation of national government policies. This typically...