The authors of this article attempt to examine jury performance by collating and comparing views on the jury's verdicts drawn from other participants in the trial. This research is based on a study of jury trials heard in the Crown Court at Birmingham, England, together with additional material drawn from a sample of cases in London. It shows that doubts about both acquittals and convictions by jury were expressed with a surprising frequency. An examination of the remedies available to correct miscarriages of justice demonstrates the ineffectiveness of current appeals procedures. The authors conclude that it is necessary to evaluate the jury's function within a political context.

An analysis of the strategies of disputing pursued by the residents of a polyethnic American urban neighborhood reveals that they frequently resort to courts to manage interpersonal and crime-related disputes. Because the legal machinery available to them rarely resolves these disputes, however, the court functions as a sanction rather than a dispute settlement forum. In the absence of effective alternative informal or formal modes of resolving disputes, disputants resort to violence, avoidance, and endurance, a pattern of tolerating ongoing conflict.

The confirmation votes on the fourteen most controversial Supreme Court nominees of the twentieth century were analyzed. The data supported the conclusion that Senate opposition to Supreme Court nominees is due primarily to a predicted dissatisfaction with the policy-relevant voting of the nominee after confirmation. The policy position of senators supporting confirmation was found to be significantly different from the policy position of senators opposing confirmation even after controls were introduced for the political party and ethical standards position of senators.

This paper assesses the impact of changes in products liability law by measuring liability insurance expenditures. Expenditure for liability insurance premiums is used as an index of resource redistribution from sellers of defective products to individuals who have been harmed by such products. Using multiple regression, comparative state data are analyzed for the period immediately prior to the enactment of the Consumer Products Safety Act in 1972, when doctrines concerning manufacturers' liability for defective products were changing in the direction of stricter negligence standards and thus greater liability for the manufacturer. Three types of products liability policies were in effect among the 50 states at that time. They were strict liability in tort, negligence plus warranty with no privity requirement, and negligence plus warranty with privity of contract required. Data from states with strict liability policies are compared with data from states where the negligence plus warranty standards were used. In states where manufacturers were subject to greater liability for defective products, more money was spent on liability insurance. This example from one area of tort law shows that common law decisions can have important social effects, and suggests a method for measuring those effects.

Common law doctrines may have as significant an impact on everyday life as those of the U.S. Supreme Court. This paper focuses on the abrogation of the doctrine of charitable immunity, which has occurred in 32 states since World War II. We investigate the impact of this change on average hospital room rate charges in each state. Both static and dynamic analyses are conducted. In both we control for economic and inflationary variables by using state per capita income data. Static analysis involves year-by-year comparison of room rate charges in abrogating states with those in states which retain the doctrine. The results are inconclusive. In dynamic analysis we identify those states which abrogated the doctrine and note changes in their average room rates at periods two, four, and six years subsequent to the abrogations. We also identify states which underwent no change in doctrine over the same periods. The amounts of room rate change in the two categories of states are then compared. We had expected the amount to be greater in abrogating states, and in fact this is almost universally the case. This strongly suggests that abrogation of charitable immunity has produced a demonstrable increase in hospital room rate charges.

This study uses the recently published correspondence of Thurman W. Arnold to examine his work in legal realism, symbols, power, and antitrust. It focuses on how Arnold, seeing symbols as functional, not merely insubstantial, was quite comfortable in pursuing a successful career within the system and using symbols to affect behavior, as in his antitrust work.