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Contextualizing the “Black Box”

State Institutions, Trial Venue, and Civil Jury Verdicts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2022

Tao L. Dumas
Tao L. Dumas*
Affiliation:
The College of New Jersey
*
Contact the author at dumast@tcnj.edu.
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Abstract

Scholars sometimes refer to the civil jury decision-making process as a “black box,” because researchers cannot view juries’ interior workings. However, state institutions structure the environment in which disputes arise and determine the rules courts apply, while environmental factors condition courts’ responses to claims. This article utilizes an original data set of civil jury verdicts in five states to examine the influence of cross-state institutional variation and trial location on courts’ dispute resolution and resource allocation functions. The results indicate that institutions and trial location significantly influence patterns of winners and losers, while case-specific factors predict the amount awarded.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Courts , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 2016 , pp. 291 - 312
Copyright
© 2016 by the Law and Courts Organized Section of the American Political Science Association. All rights reserved.

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