Empirical Legal Studies

Executions in Texas - JELS in the NYT

Today's New York Times looks at the death penalty in Texas and relies, in part, on an article in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies by Ted Eisenberg, John Blume, and Martin Wells.

Indeed, according to a 2004 study by three professors of law and statistics at Cornell published in The Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Texas prosecutors and juries were no more apt to seek and impose death sentences than those in the rest of the country.

“Texas’ reputation as a death-prone state should rest on its many murders and on its willingness to execute death-sentenced inmates,” the authors of the study, Theodore Eisenberg, John H. Blume and Martin T. Wells, wrote. “It should not rest on the false belief that Texas has a high rate of sentencing convicted murderers to death.”

The NYT article is here.

Czarnezki from Marquette to Vermont Law School

Since I suspect that I lack the necessary cache to be a Leiter Reports headliner, I thought it prudent to announce my own lateral move.  While my colleagues at Marquette are wonderful, the administration (notably Dean Joe Kearney and Associate Dean Peter Rofes) is extremely supportive of faculty scholarship, and despite the fact that a new building is forthcoming for the Marquette University Law School, I have decided to join the faculty of the Vermont Law School as an Associate Professor of Law beginning next academic year. 

The Vermont Law School, located in South Royalton, houses the top-ranked ranked environmental law program in the country, including over twenty full-time faculty teaching more than 60 courses devoted to environmental and natural resources law and policy.  The Vermont Law School’s Environmental Law Center coordinates a Master of Studies in Environmental Law degree program, an LL.M. in Environmental Law, an Environmental Law Summer Session (with over 30 visiting environmental law professors), an Environmental and Natural Resources Law Clinic, an Institute for Energy and the Environment, a Land Use Institute, and an Environmental Tax Policy Institute, as well as the Vermont Law School/Sun Yat-sen University Partnership for Environmental Law in China.  In an effort to expand my own research and initiatives in environmental law and policy, I am excited to take advantage of these programs and opportunities, in addition to the Law School’s 13 acre campus on the banks of the White River, its local food café, its accompanying compost toilets, and its notoriety for being the only law school in the country located in a town without even one stoplight.

Report on Chicago's Felony Courts

The Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice recently released “A Report on Chicago’s Felony Courts.” It’s a lengthy report at 123 pages – I just skimmed it – and it clearly provides an extensive look at Chicago’s felony courts, relying in part on interviews and/or surveys of judges, prosecutors, public defenders, private attorneys, victims, and defendants. (The Chicago Police Department didn’t respond to requests to participate.) The researchers also relied on 160 hours of courtroom observation conducted by law students. Oddly, three law students didn’t bother to turn over their materials after doing the observations. (See footnote 9.)

I didn’t see the actual surveys, interview schedules, or court observation forms anywhere in the report or on the website. I would like to see these materials made available somewhere, if they are not already.

The general findings in the report do not sound surprising. For example, the legislature criminalizes more and more behavior without sufficient attention to the costs; there is a problem with patronage jobs in staffing the courts (patronage in Chicago?); and the drug war is overburdening the courts (“The courtrooms hear more than 28,000 cases per year, half of which are non-violent, drug-related charges.” (p. 6) (my emphasis)). These and other findings come with specific recommendations.

The report is here. Coverage in the Chicago Tribune is here.
 

New ICPSR Data Releases

Quite a few new or updated datasets released today.  Here are two that looked interesting:

• 20440 Nations, Development, and Democracy, 1800-2005

• 21100 Higher Education Resource Services (HERS) Alumnae Survey, 1976-2003 [United States]

New Book- Juries

American Juries: The Verdict
by Neil Vidmar & Valerie P. Hans (Prometheus 2007)

Availability: Amazon/ B&N / Prometheus

"This monumental and comprehensive volume reviews over fifty years of empirical research on civil and criminal juries and returns a verdict that strongly supports the jury system." -- From the Description

"This is social science at its best." -- Lawrence M. Friedman

The Polls - Torture

Both PEW and Gallup (others?) have examined public support for torture.

In a lengthy report on a variety of issues, PEW has these results:

The full discussion of these results is on page 25 of the PEW report (page 29 of the pdf file).

Gallup editor Darren Carlson discusses a November 2005 survey here (n=515). The question was, "Would you be willing -- or not willing -- to have the U.S. government torture suspected terrorists if they may know details about future terrorist attacks against the U.S.?" The results: 38% were willing; 56% were not willing; and 6% had no opinion.

Update: Here's an ABC News/Washington Post poll from May 2004 (n=1005), which found 35% of Americans thought "it's acceptable to torture people suspected of terrorism in some cases."  The poll also covered specific techniques for "getting information from prisoners," such as sexually humiliating suspects (16% support) and not allowing a suspect to sleep (66% support).

New Book - Rights in American History

The Nature of Rights at the American Founding and Beyond
by Barry Alan Shain (Editor)

Availability: Amazon/ B&N / Virginia

“Professor Shain has assembled the leading thinkers on the American Founding. Their essays summarize the best works over the past few years on rights when the Constitution was ratified, and effectively demolish notions that rights today are what rights have always been.” -- Mark A. Graber

Contributors: Akhil Reed Amar, Yale University * James H. Hutson, Library of Congress * Stephen Macedo, Princeton University * Richard Primus, University of Michigan * Jack N. Rakove, Stanford University * John Phillip Reid, New York University * Daniel T. Rodgers, Princeton University * A. Gregg Roeber, Pennsylvania State University * Barry Alan Shain, Colgate University * Rogers M. Smith, University of Pennsylvania * Leif Wenar, University of Sheffield * Gordon S. Wood, Brown University

Facebook and IRBs?

Anyone who has dealt with IRBs might be interested in Christine Hurt's comments over at Conglomerate on today's NYT article assessing various university postures on whether research using Facebook requires IRB approval.

CEI Report on Entertainment Ratings

The Competitive Enterprise Institute released a report this week entitled, “Politically Determined Entertainment Ratings and How to Avoid Them” by Cord Blomquist and Eli Lehrer. The report examines the ratings systems for movies, comic books, music, television, radio, and video games. Its most basic conclusion is one I agree with: we don’t need the government running ratings systems for entertainment, whether for video games or some other medium. Their more specific conclusions are somewhat problematic. They conclude that “the best ratings systems have evolved in response to market forces.” The report doesn’t offer much support for this conclusion. In part, there is a shortage of examples of ratings systems that haven’t been influenced by the political process and/or threats of government regulation. As best I can tell from the report, satellite radio is the one complete exception where the government played no role in the development of a ratings system. B&L at 18. Music ratings are only a partial exception, since according to the report, several politicians’ wives prompted the creation of music labels. B&L at 13. Blomquist and Lehrer also conclude that as compared to other ratings systems, the one for video games is “the least government-influenced of the lot.” B&L at 24. The report actually suggests otherwise. I'll offer some thoughts on the weaknesses of what is an otherwise interesting report.

To start, compare the comic book and video game rating systems, i.e., the Comics Code and the Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) (the two systems I know best). Blomquist and Lehrer do not mention the 1948 Comics Code and the associated controversy that led to it. Instead, they start in 1954, claiming that “[t]he battle over comic book content began with Frederic Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent.” B&L at 9. Cf. Amy Kiste Nyberg, Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code 23-44 (University of Mississippi 1998) (discussing the controversy over comic book content in the 1940s). Blomquist and Lehrer describe the 1954 Comics Code, which was later modified in 1971 and 1989, as a failure. B&L at 2, 11. But they describe the ESRB’s system as one of the best ratings systems—perhaps the best ratings system. B&L at 1, 24. As mentioned above, the report concludes that government influence impairs the development of rating systems. One was bad (the Comics Code). One was good (the ESRB). To find out why, we need to be clear about how the two systems developed and the level of government involvement in both. There are, however, problems with the authors’ account of the history of these ratings systems.

Lott v. Levitt: Revised 7th Circuit Briefing Schedule

Lott's brief was originally due on Monday the 17th. The docket sheet now reports this new briefing  schedule:

Appellant's brief due 2/1/08 for John R. Lott.

Appellees' brief due 3/3/08 for HarperCollins Publ, for Steven D. Levitt.

Appellant's reply brief due 3/17/08 for John R. Lott.