How, if at all, should race figure in criminal trials with a jury? How far should attorneys be allowed or encouraged to probe the racial sensitivities of jurors and what does this mean for the appropriate way to present cases which involve racial profiling and, therefore, are likely to pit the words and actions of a white policeman against those of a young black man?

In this case study I argue that experts, to gain relevance in a jury trial, need to fit into a manifold division of knowing. They do so by borrowing and sharing diverse knowledges. These exchanges place the modest expert testimony right into an authoritative and powerful decision-making apparatus. This argument derives from an ethnographic study of a ‘‘sleepwalking defense.’’ The division of knowing embraces the certified facts, the instructed case, the competing expertise, and the common sense. As a (...) conclusion, I identify the experts’ twofold relevance. Experts perform the case as undecided and decidable. They provide exclusive knowledge and affirm a set of other knowledges. By ‘‘knowing’’ and ‘‘not knowing,’’ the experts perform individual modesty and systemic immodesty by the same token. (shrink)

This article explores the “fair trial” as a good practice for the construction of public proof. If proof signifies closure on matter at hand, and publicness is taken to signify both “access to” and “participation in” the construction of proof by the publics concerned, the authors contend that the “fair trial” is a good example of building public proof and that its backbone constraints can be of great interest to the defenders and advocates of participative Technology Assessment, especially (...) citizens' juries. (shrink)

Criminal juries in the United States typically deliver their decisions through a “general verdict,” expressing only their ultimate conclusion of “guilty” or “not guilty,” rather than through a “special verdict” that identifies whether each element of the charged crime has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. American courts have broadly favored the use of general verdicts in criminal cases due to concerns that the special verdict will curtail the jury’s decision-making autonomy, including its power to nullify the law in (...) favor of the defense, potentially undermining the criminal defendant’s constitutional right to trial by jury. This Article confronts the legal status quo on verdict format and its underlying, untested assumptions. Drawing upon prior psychology findings and legal professionals’ anecdotal observations, it questions whether the general verdict poses its own under-acknowledged threats to the rights of criminal defendants and the decision-making agency of jurors. While the more guided special verdict format is presumed to threaten nullifying acquittals, the unguided general verdict format might be enabling convictions that violate constitutional norms of due process, impartial adjudication, and equal protection. Given the high-stakes values potentially implicated in the choice of verdict format in criminal cases, it is time to put the conventional wisdom in favor of general verdicts to an empirical test. This Article therefore proposes a methodological framework for investigating whether the legal status quo accurately reflects (1) current stakeholders’ preferences and predictions, and (2) experimentally testable legal and cognitive effects of general versus special verdicts in lay determinations of criminal liability. A data-informed understanding is needed to assess whether the general verdict is optimizing the integrity, fairness, and constitutionality of criminal jury decision making. (shrink)

RESUMO O objetivo do artigo é analisar como se constituem axiologicamente os discursos de réus do crime de feminicídio no Tribunal do Júri. Sob perspectiva da Análise Dialógica do Discurso (ADD), analisamos dois depoimentos de assassinos, colhidos no triênio 2018-2020. A partir das camadas componentes da dimensão extralinguística dos enunciados eleitos para análise, os resultados apontam: a) no cronotopo do Júri, os discursos dos réus se manifestam defensivo-vitimistas-acusativos; b) na esfera ideológica jurídica, constituem-se híbridos, íntimo-cotidianos, morais e legais; c) na (...) situação específica de interação discursiva, concretizam-se profórmico-hierárquico-bivocais, perpassados de relações dialógicas com leis. Já na dimensão linguística, estilístico e composionalmente, os assassinos discursivizam, em tensão, imagens negativas das mulheres vítimas, descritas como traidoras, enganadoras, ciumentas, histéricas, provocativas, desajustadas, agressivas, entre outras. Sobre si, constroem imagens de homens vitimados, perturbados e interpelados a agir. (shrink)

This article offers a justification for the continued use of jury trials. I shall critically examine the ability of juries to render just verdicts, judicial impartiality, and judicial transparency. My contention is that the judicial system that best satisfies these values is most preferable. Of course, these three values are not the only factors relevant for consideration. Empirical evidence demonstrates that juries foster both democratic participation and public legitimation of legal decisions regarding the most serious cases. Nevertheless, juries are (...) costly and, therefore, economically less efficient than competing modes of trial. I do not argue that all human beings possess an inalienable legal right to be tried by a jury. However, it is my hope that this analysis will make clear what we might gain or lose when we propose jury reforms. (shrink)

In The Rule of Law in the Real World, Paul Gowder presents a new account of the rule of law based on three conditions: publicity, regularity, and generality. In this essay, I examine two closely related questions that are prompted by Gowder’s version of the rule of law. First, does the rule of law require citizens to follow the law? Second, what does Gowder’s account mean for jury nullification? I argue that the rule of law does not require citizens (...) to follow the law, but it does prohibit jury nullification. A discussion of some moral implications and objections follow. (shrink)

Jury science is fraught with difficulty. Since legal and institutional hurdles render it all but impossible to study live criminal jury deliberation, researchers make use of various indirect methods to evaluate jury performance. But each of these methods are open to methodological criticism and, strikingly, some of the highest-profile jury research programmes in recent years have reached opposing conclusions. Uncertainty about jury performance is an obstacle for legal reform—ongoing debates about the ‘justice gap’ for complainants (...) of sexual offences has rendered these problems stark. This paper proposes a way to advance the debate. (shrink)

Content note: This paper discusses rape throughout.Abstract. In this paper, I consider arguments in favor of jury trials. While I find these generally persuasive, I argue that there can be cases where juries are not fit for purpose. In those cases, I argue that they should be replaced by judge-only trials. In doing so, I propose a framework for determining whether a type of case is unsuitable for jury trials. Partly in response to low conviction rates, there have (...) been recent suggestions that rape trials should be conducted without juries. I suggest that there is strong evidence that these offences qualify under the criteria I have described. As a result, I argue that judge-only trials should be adopted for trying rape cases. (shrink)

The concept of Homo economicus, one of the major foundations of neoclassical economics and a subset of the ideology of laisser-faire capitalism. was recently charged and tried in the island high court. Using the island’s virtual jury system for the first time, the accused was tried before a jury of three — Plato, Schopenhauer and feminist economists — chosen by him while under a veil of ignorance of the charge. All three returned guilty verdicts. Plato’s was prescriptive: ‘One (...) ought not to be like Homo economicus’. Schopenhauer’s verdict was descriptive: ‘Human nature is not Homo economicus’. The feminist verdict was both. Following the trial — described as a thought experiment — the island’s resident philosopher put forward two claims: (a) Neoclassical economists base their theories on a deficient depiction of humankind (descriptive misconception) a claim supported by a witness expert in experimental economics; (b) The depiction holds a dominant but unjustified position in various discourses such as welfare state debates because it is promoted by a small but highly influential group of economically privileged, universityeducated whites, namely graduates of economics, a claim supported by the sociology expert witness. (shrink)

Cases connected with the troubles in Northern Ireland have been tried by a judge sitting without a jury in `Diplock Courts'. Given the symbolic importance of the jury within the common law tradition, this study offers the first systematic comparison of the process of trial by judge alone with that of trial by jury. The authors determine the impact of the replacement of jury trial with trial by a professional judge on the (...) adversarial character of the criminal trial process. (shrink)

In this paper, I have analyzed the right to trial by jury in civil cases as reflected in decisions of the Michigan Supreme Court over approximately a 20 year period dealing with three areas affecting the right to trial by jury in civil cases: (1) entitlement to a jury trial; (2) summary disposition; and (3) directed verdicts. The study was constructed to cover cases over a substantial period of time, so that it would be (...) possible to analyze whether the changing composition of the Michigan Supreme Court, beginning in the late 1990's, impacted on the Court's decisions in these three areas.The conclusion that emerges from the is that the Court, as currently constituted, has diminished the right to trial by jury in civil cases in Michigan. The Court is more inclined than it was prior to 1999 to hold in more cases that there is no genuine issue of material fact, justifying summary disposition, and has now heard cases in which it has held that the defendant is entitled to a directed verdict. And the fact that the Court is more inclined to uphold the granting of summary disposition and directed verdicts is likely to have a demonstrable impact on these kinds cases when they are presented to the Court of Appeals and the trial courts. These courts, following the precedents of the Supreme Court and the results of the cases coming before that Court, will be more likely to rule in favor of granting motions for summary disposition and motions for directed verdicts.Given the Court's view of the diminished role of the jury in resolving factual disputes in civil cases, litigating lawyers must make the best of a bad situation and do everything that they can in order to protect the right to trial by jury in civil cases. They must try to ensure in the early stages of the litigation that their cases are strong enough to survive a motion for summary disposition and get to the jury, and at the trial they must make a determined effort to present sufficient evidence to survive a directed verdict. Hopefully the Court's view of the diminished role of the jury will not have dealt a fatal blow to the right to trial by jury in civil cases in Michigan. Time will tell how well the lawyers of Michigan have succeeded in preserving this fundamental constitutional right. (shrink)

In criminal trials with a jury, judges have many opportunities to engage in adjudicative fact-finding before the jury retires. English law has no conceptual framework for examining this judicial fact-finding which encompasses two categories of collateral fact (preliminary and underlying fact) and foreign law. A third category of collateral fact (conditional fact) is decided by the jury. The article examines the nature of judicial fact-finding and the history and rationale for this allocation of fact-finding responsibility between judge (...) and jury. (shrink)

Over the past 30 years, the Australian state of Victoria has made numerous reforms to a set of jury directions purporting to address concerns that rape trials do not adequately respond to the reality of sexual offending in the community. Building on work identifying the predominant narratives mobilised in rape trials, in this article we consider whether the way in which a jury consumes information during a trial explains why the jury directions, positioned and utilised as (...) they are, appear to have been inadequate to the task of enabling juries to re-imagine evidence through alternative narrative frameworks. (shrink)

This article argues that, given the current pervasive uncertainty about the reliability of jury deliberation, we ought to treat it with epistemic humility. I further argue that epistemic humility should be expressed and enforced by turning jury deliberation from a mandatory rule of the jury trial to a waivable right of the defendant. I consider two main objections to my argument: the first one concerns the putative self-defeatingness of humility attitudes; the second objection points to the (...) burdensomeness of granting an unconditional jury deliberation waiver to the defendant. (shrink)

Jury nullification, that phenomenon whereby a jury returns a not-guilty verdict for a defendant it believes to be technically guilty of the alleged crime, is, obviously, a controversial issue. What is not a matter of controversy, however, is the fact that the law protects the jury’s ability to behave this way. Much of the controversy therefore centers on whether juries ought to be informed of this ability to nullify free from legal redress. In this paper I examine (...) a number of arguments both for and against the view that juries ought to be, in the words of the literature, fully informed. In the end I conclude that there is significant empirical evidence to suggest that, rather than simply promoting justice and mercy, as proponents of the instruction argue, fully informing a jury has the unforeseen consequence of encouraging juries to behave in a manner I label bad-faith, and that such bad-faith juries in fact corrupt the principles of justice and fairness that are the cornerstones of the trial system. (shrink)

Researchers face perennial difficulties in studying live jury deliberation. As a result, the academic community struggles to reach a consensus on key matters of legal reform concerning jury trials. The hurdles faced by empirical jury researchers are often legal or institutional. This note argues that the legal and institutional barriers preventing live deliberation research should be removed and discusses two forms that live deliberation research could take.

Jury nullification refers to the behaviour of a jury that votes to acquit a defendant of criminal charges despite believing that: a) the defendant did in fact commit the actions with which she is charged; and, b) such actions are, indeed, prohibited by law. While there are many objections to this practice, the most striking thing about jury nullification is that nothing is done to actually prevent or punish jurors who behave this way. In this paper, I (...) explore three rationales for why jury nullification is an officially tolerated, if not necessarily welcome, element of Anglo-American criminal law jury trials. All three of these rationales centre in one way or another on the idea that the very concept of a jury trial necessitates allowing the jury to extend its traditional purview in such a manner. (shrink)

The objective of the paper is to present the differences in the grounds of appeal and the appeal proceedings against judgments issued by a court composed of representatives of the public in a criminal trial at first instance. At present, citizens are allowed to adjudicate most often in one of three forms: persons adjudicating independently without the participation of a professional factor, who are not professionals in the field of law and criminal procedure (e.g. judges of the peace in (...) the common law system); a jury composed of citizens and adjudicating mostly on guilt of the accused; or lay judges adjudicating all aspects of the case in one panel together with professional judges. However, the participation of laymen in adjudication is not a prevailing rule. Many countries legal systems do not allow the citizens to co-decide in criminal cases. The paper also indicates the arguments for the democratization of the judiciary through a wider admission of citizens to participate in criminal justice. This issue has been examined on the background of three aspects of democracy: representative, deliberative and participatory. (shrink)

Trial by jury is a fundamental feature of democratic governance. But what form should jury decision-making take? I argue against the status quo system in which juries are encouraged and even required to engage in group deliberation as a means to reaching a decision. Jury deliberation is problematic for both theoretical and empirical reasons. On the theoretical front, deliberation destroys the independence of jurors’ judgments that is needed for certain attractive theoretical results. On the empirical front, (...) we have evidence from both legal and non-legal contexts that group deliberation often leads to group judgments that are worse in a number of respects than judgments generated by non-interactional methods of judgment aggregation. Finally, I examine some possible alternatives to free-wheeling jury deliberation, including the constrained and structured deliberation embodied in the DELPHI method, voting, and averaging of probabilistic judgments. (shrink)

In both Great Britain and the United States there has been a growing debate about the modern acceptability of jury nullification. Properly understood, juries do not have any constitutional right to ignore the law, but they do have the power to do so nevertheless. Juries that nullify may be motivated by a variety of concerns: too harsh sentences, improper government action, racism, etc. In this article, I shall attempt to defend jury nullification on a number of grounds. First, (...) I discuss the use of general verdicts and reject their replacement in criminal trials by special verdicts. Second, I examine verdicts based upon mistakes and racial prejudice, turning my attention to perverse verdicts and the question of whether or not juries are guilty of legislating when nullifying the law. Finally, I look at the problem of the awarding of excessive damages by juries. My goal will be to provide a sound theoretical defence of the practice of jury nullification. (shrink)

Reason Curve, Jury Competence, and the English Criminal Justice System, a cross-jurisdictional and cross-disciplinary book, seeks to stimulate discussion and extend the debate in the area of criminal trials in light of the absence of an articulated explanation for a verdict. The book traces the history and development of the jury, from the Carolingian kings, its advancement in the English Courts following papal intervention, the impact of the Magna Carta, to its general use, current curtailment in England and (...) Wales, and re-emergence in Continental Europe. Central to the book's submission is the dictum that the jurors' franchise to deliver a cryptic verdict is 'a matter between them and their conscience... (shrink)

Discusses who should decide the result of legal trials, focusing on the jury system.

Criminal juries make decisions of great importance. A key criticism of juries is that they are unreliable in a multitude of ways, from exhibiting racial or gendered biases, to misunderstanding their role, to engaging in impropriety such as internet research. Recently, some have even claimed that the use of juries creates injustice on a large-scale, as a cause of low conviction rates for sexual criminality. Unfortunately, empirical research into jury deliberation is undermined by the fact that researchers are unable (...) to study live juries. The indirect sources of evidence used by researchers suffer from various problems, the most important of which is dubious levels of ecological validity. Real jury research—studying live jury deliberation—is controversial. However, as I argue, the objections to it are unconvincing. There is in fact a moral imperative to facilitate real jury research. (shrink)

Resumo: Este trabalho coloca em foco o Tribunal do Júri sob um prisma analítico, seu surgimento e atual utilização, apresentando as ideias propostas por Foucault ao longo de sua obra a respeito das instituições jurídicas historicamente estabelecidas pelos governos para relacionar em especial aquela instituição com os conceitos da biopolítica apresentados pelo autor e colocar em pauta a inadequação de seu modelo ao momento histórico atual das sociedades ocidentais.: This work focus the jury Trial under an analitic prism, (...) its origin and current use, presenting the ideas proposed by Foucault in his work towards the justice institutions established by governments to relate specially that institute to the biopolitics concepts presented by the author and put in the subject the inadequacy of its model to the current historical moment of occidental societies. Keywords : Justice; Foucault; Jury; Legitimation; State Reason; Biopolitics. (shrink)

Socrates is one of the most important yet enigmatic philosophers of all time; his fame has endured for centuries despite the fact that he never actually wrote anything. In 399 B.C.E., he was tried on the charge of impiety by the citizens of Athens, convicted by a jury, and sentenced to death (ordered to drink poison derived from hemlock). About these facts there is no disagreement. However, as the sources collected in this book and the scholarly essays that follow (...) them show, several of even the most basic facts about these events were controversial in antiquity, and the questions persist today: How and why was Socrates brought to trial? Why did the jurors, members of the world's first democracy, find him guilty? When he was given an opportunity to escape execution, why did he refuse to do so and instead accept the punishment that he and his friends agreed was unjustly assigned to him? How exactly did Socrates die? Differences of opinion on these and other issues continue to arouse our curiosity and to challenge new generations of students and scholars. The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies is the first work to collect in one place all of the major ancient sources on Socrates' death--those of both his critics and his defenders--as well as recent scholarly views. Part I includes new translations of Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and the death scene from Phaedo, as well as other ancient sources that shed light on Socrates' trial and execution. Part II features some of the most influential recent scholarship on this historically momentous event with work by M. F. Burnyeat, Robert Parker, Mark L. McPherran, Thomas C. Brickhouse and Nicholas D. Smith, Richard Kraut, Christopher Gill, and Enid Bloch (whose essay is published here for the first time). Ideal for undergraduate surveys of ancient Greek philosophy and upper-level courses on Socrates and Socratic philosophy, this unique collection provides an unprecedented look into the many perplexing questions surrounding the trial and execution of this remarkable man. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Socrates' Trial and Conviction of the Jurors in Plato's ApologyDougal BlythI am going to argue in this paper that, in the three speeches constituting his Apology of Socrates, Plato presents the judicial proceedings that led to Socrates' execution as having precisely the opposite significance to their superficial legal meaning. This re-evaluation will lead to some reflections on the politics of Socrates' defence, and, similarly, on Plato's own aims (...) in writing the Apology. I want to show not only that the trial as portrayed demonstrates an inevitable dereliction of duty by the democratic jury, but also, more interestingly, that throughout the proceedings Socrates understands the meaning of the trial precisely in terms of his anticipation of the jurors' judicial incapacity.In the prooimion to his defence speech, Socrates requests that the jurors ignore his manner of speaking and concentrate on whether his case is just, "since this is a judge's virtue (), while that of a rhêtôr is to speak the truth" (18a5-6, cf. 35c2-5). We can gloss the expression "a judge's aretê" in this context as his function, or responsibility.1 Socrates claims that he, himself, fulfills his own responsibility as a defendant to tell the truth (17b4-c4, 33c1-2, cf. 34b5, 35b9-c2) in a speech that asserts his exemplary piety in Apollo's service and his beneficial influence on the Athenian youth. But if, in claiming that he is innocent of the charge, Socrates does tell the truth, then those jurors who thereupon convict him of impiety and corruption, and subsequently sentence him to death, have failed in their duty to judge rightly.My claim is that Socrates sees the trial as a test of the jurors' abilities. It is characteristic of Socrates to test people regarding their concern for virtue and justice, a habit to which he devotes extended discussion during his defence, even dramatising it provocatively in a central passage (29d7-e5) that I aim shortly to analyse in detail. Moreover, Socrates specifically withholds from the jury the title of dikastai or judges; he does finally award the title in his address following the sentence, but only to those who have voted [End Page 1] to acquit him (40a2-3).2 The possibility thus emerges that Socrates has treated the legal proceedings all along as a moral (and intellectual) test, or trial, of the empanelled jurors themselves, to see whether they are capable of the legal function to which they have been allotted. In that case, Socrates is putting on trial, not just those individual citizens, but the very legal system of democratic Athens.Socratic irony and truthfulnessBefore considering Socrates' own explicit judgement during those final remarks on the jurors' moral offence and punishment, I should first address briefly the issue of Socrates' irony. In the past, some writers have asserted that this irony involves him in not telling the truth about himself during his defence, in which case the jury might well have been justified in convicting him. Actually, there does seem to be a consensus among the more extended treatments of the Apology that have emerged during the last decade, at least on the point that Plato presents Socrates as committed to making as sincere an attempt at a defence of his case as is consistent with his philosophical commitment to virtue, and so to telling the truth.3I shall not re-argue this point in detail, but shall take it to be secured by two basic considerations: consistency with the Crito would require Socrates to recognise a legal obligation to make a sincere attempt at defence while his obligation to Apollo to continue his mission in Athens if possible would motivate that attempt with the goal of acquittal.4 Instead, I want to show what role irony does have in Socrates' defence, given that his principled law-abidingness requires him to attempt to persuade the jury, in accordance with truth and justice, that he is innocent (cf. 19a6-7, 18a7-b1, 18e5).Where Socrates acknowledges the obligation to defend himself, he remarks on the difficulty he faces, a difficulty that has resulted from the slander to which he has long... (shrink)

In its roughly 25 years of existence, the trial consulting profession has grown dramatically in membership, recognition, and breadth of practice. What began as a small activist group of social scientists volunteering their expertise to assist in the defense of Vietnam War protestors has evolved into a diverse set of professionals from a range of educational and professional backgrounds. In spite of such enormous growth, the work of trial consultants has gone largely unexamined. Trial Consulting takes an (...) in-depth look at the primary activities of trial consultants, including witness preparation, focus groups and mock trials, jury selection, change of venue surveys, and attorney presentation style. It also examines the profession's struggle to define itself, resisting certification and licensure requirements and settling instead for a set of practice standards. The authors draw upon empirical and other scholarly work in the social sciences, recommended "best practices" from trial lawyers, and the written and spoken recommendations and reflections of the trial consultants themselves. Addressing a broad spectrum of topics ranging from handwriting analysis to medical malpractice cases, they also suggest reforms for improving the profession and the efficacy of the trial consultant in the courtroom. The result is a critical analysis of what trial consulting truly adds to, and detracts from, the administration of justice. This book is an indispensable guide for practicing and aspiring trial consultants as well as the judges, attorneys, and psychologists who work with them. Trial Consulting provides a thought-provoking statement on the state of the profession, and students and professionals alike will benefit from the challenges it offers. (shrink)

In its essence, post-trial obligations describe a duty by research sponsors to provide a successfully tested drug to research participants who took part in the relevant clinical trials after the trial has been concluded. In some instances,this duty is extended beyond the research participants. This article is divided into three main parts. The first part outlines the legal basis for post-trial obligations by looking at international guidelines, including those issued by the World Medical Association. National legislation is (...) exemplified through resolutions and guidelines issued by Brazil and South Africa respectively. The second part analyses the ethical foundation for post-trial obligations, in particular the attempt to minimize exploitation of research subjects. The third part raises obstacles and challenges for the implementation of post-trial obligations. The jury is still out on whether post-trial obligations in the form of access to drugs for clinical trial participants is the best, or even a good way, to avoid exploitation in medical research. (shrink)

In 1972 Angela Davis stood trial on charges of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder before a White jury. A professor of philosophy, a Communist, and a member of the Black Panther Party, she had no reason to believe that any of the jurors were her peers. Yet, after three days of deliberation, they returned a Not Guilty verdict on each of the counts. Through an analysis of the case, this essay argues for a new approach to peerhood that defines (...) it as a combination of (1) demographic similarities to the defendant and (2) a worldview orientation of contestation and anticorruption that emerges from the jury’s function in the trial. Greater clarity on how these factors are important for peerhood provides insights into how jurors can best fulfill their role and what remedies are necessary to achieve a jury of one’s peers. (shrink)

The future of trial lies in customization. Throughout the Anglo-American world, the public model of criminal and civil procedure is gradually giving way to a private contractual paradigm, one which allows the litigating parties to tailor the evidentiary and procedural landscape of trial to fit their specific needs and preferences. Procedural and evidence rules are shifting from mandatory safeguards of public values to default rules and bargaining chips within the hands of the litigating parties. There is growing recognition (...) in the ability of litigating parties in civil trials and of defendants in criminal trials to waive evidentiary and procedural rights, such as the right of cross-examination, the right to trial by jury, or the right to appeal. Courts are exhibiting a willingness to enforce choice of procedure and choice of evidence agreements, such as agreements to restrict the presentation of otherwise admissible evidence or to allow for presentation of otherwise inadmissible evidence. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Socrates' Trial and Conviction of the Jurors in Plato's ApologyDougal BlythI am going to argue in this paper that, in the three speeches constituting his Apology of Socrates, Plato presents the judicial proceedings that led to Socrates' execution as having precisely the opposite significance to their superficial legal meaning. This re-evaluation will lead to some reflections on the politics of Socrates' defence, and, similarly, on Plato's own aims (...) in writing the Apology. I want to show not only that the trial as portrayed demonstrates an inevitable dereliction of duty by the democratic jury, but also, more interestingly, that throughout the proceedings Socrates understands the meaning of the trial precisely in terms of his anticipation of the jurors' judicial incapacity.In the prooimion to his defence speech, Socrates requests that the jurors ignore his manner of speaking and concentrate on whether his case is just, "since this is a judge's virtue (), while that of a rhêtôr is to speak the truth" (18a5-6, cf. 35c2-5). We can gloss the expression "a judge's aretê" in this context as his function, or responsibility.1 Socrates claims that he, himself, fulfills his own responsibility as a defendant to tell the truth (17b4-c4, 33c1-2, cf. 34b5, 35b9-c2) in a speech that asserts his exemplary piety in Apollo's service and his beneficial influence on the Athenian youth. But if, in claiming that he is innocent of the charge, Socrates does tell the truth, then those jurors who thereupon convict him of impiety and corruption, and subsequently sentence him to death, have failed in their duty to judge rightly.My claim is that Socrates sees the trial as a test of the jurors' abilities. It is characteristic of Socrates to test people regarding their concern for virtue and justice, a habit to which he devotes extended discussion during his defence, even dramatising it provocatively in a central passage (29d7-e5) that I aim shortly to analyse in detail. Moreover, Socrates specifically withholds from the jury the title of dikastai or judges; he does finally award the title in his address following the sentence, but only to those who have voted [End Page 1] to acquit him (40a2-3).2 The possibility thus emerges that Socrates has treated the legal proceedings all along as a moral (and intellectual) test, or trial, of the empanelled jurors themselves, to see whether they are capable of the legal function to which they have been allotted. In that case, Socrates is putting on trial, not just those individual citizens, but the very legal system of democratic Athens.Socratic irony and truthfulnessBefore considering Socrates' own explicit judgement during those final remarks on the jurors' moral offence and punishment, I should first address briefly the issue of Socrates' irony. In the past, some writers have asserted that this irony involves him in not telling the truth about himself during his defence, in which case the jury might well have been justified in convicting him. Actually, there does seem to be a consensus among the more extended treatments of the Apology that have emerged during the last decade, at least on the point that Plato presents Socrates as committed to making as sincere an attempt at a defence of his case as is consistent with his philosophical commitment to virtue, and so to telling the truth.3I shall not re-argue this point in detail, but shall take it to be secured by two basic considerations: consistency with the Crito would require Socrates to recognise a legal obligation to make a sincere attempt at defence while his obligation to Apollo to continue his mission in Athens if possible would motivate that attempt with the goal of acquittal.4 Instead, I want to show what role irony does have in Socrates' defence, given that his principled law-abidingness requires him to attempt to persuade the jury, in accordance with truth and justice, that he is innocent (cf. 19a6-7, 18a7-b1, 18e5).Where Socrates acknowledges the obligation to defend himself, he remarks on the difficulty he faces, a difficulty that has resulted from the slander to which he has long... (shrink)

This paper shows that the problem of treating people as equals in a world marked by deep-seated and, often, recalcitrant inequalities has implications for the way we approach the provision of security and justice. On the one hand, it means that racial profiling will generally be unjustified even when it might promote collective interests in security, on the other, it means that we should strive to create racially mixed juries, even in cases where defendant and alleged-victim are of the same (...) race. The paper examines a recent report on race and jury trials in the United Kingdom and concludes that, despite the author's claims that all-white juries are fair, the data shows the complex ways in which racial differences are translated into unjustified and arbitrary inequalities. Hence, it concludes, racially mixed juries are desirable, and sometimes necessary for justice, though probably not sufficient. (shrink)

Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith offer a comprehensive historical and philosophical interpretation of, and commentary on, one of Plato's most widely read works, the Apology of Socrates. Virtually every modern interpretation characterizes some part of what Socrates says in the Apology as purposefully irrelevant or even antithetical to convincing the jury to acquit him at his trial. This book, by contrast, argues persuasively that Socrates offers a sincere and well-reasoned defense against the charges he faces. First, the authors (...) establish a consensus of ancient reports about Socrates ' moral and religious principles and show that these prohibit him from needlessly risking the condemnation of the jury. Second, they consider each specific claim made by Socrates in the Apology and show how each can be construed as an honest effort to inform the jurors of the truth and to convince them of his blamelessness. The arguments of this book are informed by a critical review of the scholarly literature and careful attention to the philosophy expressed in Plato's other early dialogues. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Attribution Bias in the Trials of Accused Serial Killers Introduction The Case of Doug Clark Situationism and Destructive Behavior Attribution Biases Seeing Ghosts “Ewww…Guilty!” “You people are all…” “Aren't you the guy who…?” Doug Clark Again Conclusion.

This article analyzes the origins of the “responsible corporate officer” doctrine: the trial of Joseph Dotterweich. That doctrine holds that an officer may be personally liable for the criminal act of a subordinate if the officer was, in some indefinite way, able to prevent the violation. Applying this doctrine, the prosecution of Dotterweich entailed strict liability for a strict liability offense. The underlying offenses—the interstate sale of one misbranded and adulterated drug and one misbranded drug—were said to be strict (...) liability offenses. And then, with respect to Dotterweich as the corporation’s general manager, the government argued that he was strictly liable because he stood in “responsible relation” to the company’s acts. The government never tried to prove that the company, Buffalo Pharmacal, was negligent, nor did it try to prove that Dotterweich was negligent in his supervision of the employees of Buffalo Pharmacal. The prosecutor and judge were candid about this theory throughout the trial, although the judge conceded that it seemed bizarre and unfair. The defense lawyer repeatedly sought to inject what became known throughout the trial as the “question of good faith,” but was circumvented at almost every turn. What would thus seem to be the crux of any criminal trial—the personal fault of the defendant—was carefully shorn from the jury’s consideration. The government’s theory was so at odds with intuitive notions of liability and blame that, as one probes into the case, and looks at the language used in the government’s appellate briefs, imputations of moral fault inevitably crept in. Yet the government was not entitled to make such accusations, as it had pruned moral considerations from the trial. The article argues that the responsible corporate officer doctrine can never enjoy a secure place in our legal system. First, the doctrine is at a minimum in tension with, and often in direct opposition to, basic principles of the criminal law; and second, the doctrine fails, when followed to its logical conclusions, to accord with basic notions of fair play. The article concludes that the responsible corporate officer doctrine is either unnecessary, in cases in which the evidence establishes personal fault, or unjust, in cases in which it creates liability in the absence of personal fault through the unspecified notion of “responsibility.” The Dotterweich case illustrates what is contemplated by the latter possibility, and why it is problematic in any judicial system that purports, in the words of the Model Penal Code, “to safeguard conduct that is without fault from condemnation as criminal.”. (shrink)

Children remain largely absent from sociolegal scholarship on sexual violence. Taking an intersectional approach to the analysis of attorneys’ strategies during child sexual assault trials, this article argues that legal narratives draw on existing gender, racial, and age stereotypes to present legally compelling evidence of credibility. This work builds on Crenshaw’s focus on women of color, emphasizing the role of structures of power and inequality in constituting the conditions of children’s experiences of adjudication. Using ethnographic observations of courtroom jury (...) trials, transcripts, and court records, three narrative themes of child credibility emerged: invisible wounds, rebellious adolescents, and dysfunctional families. Findings show how attorneys use these themes to emphasize the child’s unmarked body, imperceptible emotional responses, rebellious character, and harmful familial environments. The current study fills a gap in sexual assault research by moving beyond trial outcomes to address cultural narratives within the court that are inextricably embedded in intersectional dimensions of power and the reproduction of social status. (shrink)

Before the Apology trial by five hundred of his fellow Athenians, Socrates is put on trial by a close associate, Alcibiades, in the Symposium. The first trial prefigures or echoes the second, famous one. The speeches on love that precede the entrance of Alcibiades, especially Socrates's speech—in which he discloses instructions on love given to him by Diotima—is the basis on which Socrates should be judged. Because the jury for this trial does not render a (...) verdict, I assume the role of a juror. If I were a modern prospective juror, I might not pass voir dire; though, like Alcibiades, I have been a lover of Socrates, I have become disenchanted with him because I find no evidence that he examined his own life in the... (shrink)

Introduction and Discussion of a Special Issue in philosophy of law "Philosophical Dimensions of the Trial" -/- .

Jury nullification occurs when a jury votes to acquit a defendant in a criminal trial despite its belief that the defendant is, in fact, guilty. One of the main objections to this practice is that it subverts the rule of law. In this paper, I examine this objection by expanding on what is entailed by the rule of law objection and demonstrating that the very principles that the rule of law are built upon – liberty and autonomy (...) – are, in fact, preserved and promoted, and not subverted by, jury nullification. (shrink)

An emerging approach to complement randomised controlled trial (RCT) data in the development of radiotherapy treatments is to use routinely collected ‘real-world’ data (RWD). RWD is the data collected as standard-of-care about all patients during their usual cancer care pathway. Given the nature of this data, important questions remain about the permissibility and acceptability of using RWD in routine practice. We involved and engaged with patients, carers and the public in a two-day citizens’ jury to understand their views (...) and obtain decisions regarding two key issues: (1) preferred approaches to consent for the use of RWD within the context of patients receiving radiotherapy for lung cancer in RAPID-RT and (2) how RWD use should be best communicated to patients. Individual views were polled using questionnaires at various stages of the jury, whilst group discussion activities prompted further dialogue about the rationale behind choices of consent. Key decisions obtained from the jury include: (1) an opt-out approach to consent for the use of RWD; (2) the opt-out approach to consent should be informed. Furthermore, it was advised that information and communication regarding the consent process and use of RWD should be accessible, clear and available in a variety of formats. It is important that the consent process for patient data use is underpinned by principles of autonomy and transparency with clear channels of communication between those asking for and giving consent. Moreover, the process of seeking consent from patients should be proportionate to the risks presented from their participation. (shrink)

The use of character in the criminal trial raises a number of controversial issues such as the nature of criminal responsibility, the link between past and future behaviour, and the way juries and judges reason about evidence of prior wrongdoing. This book reassesses and reflects on the significance of the law's increasing emphasis on character.

The unprecedented rise and fall in silver's price during 1979 and 1980 resulted in charges against the Hunt brothers of Dallas of monopolization and market manipulation, charges which led to a lengthy trial. This book focuses on the economic analysis used at this trial. Drawing upon interviews with the judge, jury, attorneys and expert witnesses, it investigates the elusive definition of manipulation in sophisticated markets, the difficulties of interpreting statistical evidence, the imprecision in calculating damages, the hidden (...) assumptions behind inferences concerning intent, and the hazards introduced when economic analysis enters complex litigation. The author concludes that these problems induce courtroom procedures to oversimplify the economic analysis and cause the law on market manipulation to be created retroactively. Yet the failure lies not with the legal institutions but with the futures exchanges who had not developed in advance the rules to minimize large-scale trading during the unusual price moves. (shrink)