We present a positive political theory of criminal sentencing and test it using data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Under the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, judges can use offense-level adjustments (fact-based decision making) to lengthen or shorten the Guidelines' presumptive sentences....

Less than 1% of U.S. Federal judges report political motivations for retirement and resignation. However using two centuries of data, I show that 13% of retirements and 36% of resignations follow political cycles. When the President comes from a different political party as judge's party of...

Current efforts at performance measurement in the state courts are described, situated in a global and historical context, using the framework of Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000). The structure of state courts in the US is described, with attention given to structural issues that affect...

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...

Economists, legal scholars and policy makers are concerned about the impact of patent litigation on the rate and direction of US innovation and on the functioning of the US intellectual property system. At this time, however, there is no reliable, comprehensive, free and publicly accessible...

We estimate the link between the court system and firm value by exploiting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling which changed firms' exposure to different courts. We find that exposure to courts which are highly ranked by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce increases firm value. The effect is driven by...

This article strongly reaffirms the author's support for the use of asylum as a way of providing justice for those fleeing persecution from other countries. Additionally, this article was written to help educate those interested in asylum law by providing some history and background on asylum....

One consequence of the increasingly transnational nature of civil litigation is that U.S. courts must frequently address the interests of foreign sovereigns. These interactions arise primarily in three contexts: when a foreign government is the defendant in a U.S. court; when a claim requires a...