New Books In Law

“I am not smart. I invented smart to compel you to do what I want.” — The Reptile Any civil trial represents the culmination of many, many years of disciplined mental effort. Legal education generates learning, and the discovery process generates information.–Yet neither learning nor information can result in a verdict of liability. For that, you need a jury: and a jury operates, by design, on very different principles of decision-making. As Rebecca West wrote, “The whole point of a jury is that it is not learned … but chunks of laity, brought in for the special purpose of being unlearned.” Judges resolve the cases that can be decided by learning and logic. Attorneys settle out of court the ones that can be decided through gathering information.But in the end, when learned, reasonable people disagree, the case “goes to the jury” — and law professors lose interest. It is here that David Ball and Don Keenan‘s research begins. What happens in the