Political Beliefs and Tort Awards: Evidence of Rationally Political Jurors from Two Data Sets
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Scott Wentland
Abstract
To better understand jury decision-making, this paper explores the extent to which jurors’ political beliefs impact real world trial outcomes. The key finding of this study is a strong empirical link between a jury pool’s political leanings and tort awards, robust across two distinct data sets, namely pooled panels from the Civil Justice Survey of State Courts and Jury Verdict Research data. I find that a one standard deviation (12%) increase in a jury pool’s Democratic vote (in presidential elections) increases tort awards by approximately $157,600 (or 30%) on average. This general relationship remains consistent through county and time fixed effects estimations, and controlling for a number of socioeconomic demographics. While the empirics presented here do not establish a definitive causal link, the data lends evidence to the case for what I call a “rationally political juror,” suggesting further examination into juror incentives and decision-making.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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- Political Beliefs and Tort Awards: Evidence of Rationally Political Jurors from Two Data Sets
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Article
- Are Academics Messy? Testing the Broken Windows Theory with a Field Experiment in the Work Environment
- The Role of Prosecutor's Incentives in Creating Congestion in Criminal Courts
- Political Beliefs and Tort Awards: Evidence of Rationally Political Jurors from Two Data Sets
- Mitigating Judgment Proofness: Information Acquisition vs. Extended Liability
- Decoupled Liability and Efficiency: An Impossibility Theorem
- Natural Resource Production under Divided Ownership: Evidence from Coalbed Methane
- The Hyperbolic Punishment Function
- Patent Litigation and the Role of Enforcement Insurance
- Contractual Democracy
