Lawyers routinely have to decide under considerable uncertainty. Those officially applying the law in force, like judges or public officials, often do not know all the facts of the case. And the legislator ought to know, understand and forecast much more than he usually does. Economics,...

The Commonwealth of Virginia abolished parole and reformed sentencing for all felony of-fenders committed on or after January 1, 1995. We examine the impact of this legislationon reported crime rates using different time series approaches. In particular, structuraltime series models are...

There is extensive literature on whether courts or legislators produce efficient rules, but which of them produces rules efficiently? The law is subject to uncertainty ex ante; uncertainty makes the outcomes of trials difficult to predict and deters parties from settling disputes out of court. In...

In criminal cases judges evaluate and combine probabilistic evidence to reach verdicts. Unavoidably, errors are made, resulting in unwarranted conviction or acquittal of defendants. This paper addresses the questions (1) whether hearing cases by teams of three persons leads to less error than...

This article examines whether the judges of the French Constitutional Court demonstrated partisanship when ruling on the validity of the elections to the lower house of the French Parliament between 1958 and 2005. It uses a new dataset on the decisions of the Constitutional Court which takes...

This paper argues that empirical economic analysis in court proceedings is subject to important economic and legal restrictions, cumulating in a fundamental trade-off between accuracy and practicality. We draw lessons from two influential German court cases - the paper wholesaler cartel decision...

Das Bundesverfassungsgericht hat 2010 die sozialrechtlichen Regelbedarfsleistungen für verfassungswidrig erklärt und Nachbesserungen gefordert. Im Juli 2014 hat nun das Bundesverfassungsgericht die eingeleiteten Maßnahmen als gerade noch verfassungsgemäß bewertet. Um aktuell die...