Procedural Justice: Jurors’ Views of the Fairness of the Legal System

May 7th, 2019|

By Natalie Gordon, M.A., DOAR analyst Imagine that your football team makes it to the Superbowl, but only because a referee made a bad call in the previous game that determined who would advance to the championship (hint: Superbowl 2019). You might have conflicted feelings: Happiness about your team, but concerns about the ease of breaching the fairness of the whole system. These concerns are the subject of an area of research on procedural justice that has implications for the courtroom. The fairness of procedures, referred to as “procedural justice,” impacts participants’ and observers’ acceptability of an outcome more than

The Gender Divide in Reporting Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace and its Outcome

May 2nd, 2019|

by Chad Lackey,  Ph.D., Director and Emma Shuck, Consultant Employees still struggle with the decision to report harassment and discrimination despite legal protections and increased efforts by employers to make it easier and safer. Will I be blamed or face retaliation? Will it make a difference? Will employers even take my complaint seriously? With no easy answers to these questions, victims too often decide never to report their experiences. In 2016, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) estimated as much as three-quarters of harassment in the workplace goes unreported. The #MeToo movement reminded all of us just how many women

Anecdotes are to analogies as…

December 14th, 2018|

By Natalie Gordon, M.A., DOAR analyst What makes for an effective anecdote? In health research, good anecdotes are considered an exercise in generalization: “We have generalized from the data to the anecdote; we can generalize from the anecdote about the data and generalize to other contexts and populations.”[1] Applying this to a trial setting, your party’s narrative or case theme might be viewed as the “data,” and the “other contexts and populations” might refer to your jurors and their own personal experiences. Thus, the anecdote connects your narrative to your jurors; it makes your story relatable. But anecdotes do more

Sidebar Ep 8: Post-Ownership Society

November 21st, 2018|

In DOAR’s web series “Sidebar,” Jury Consultant Roy Futterman, Ph.D. provides his insights, analysis and commentary on the state of the world from the intersection of the legal system, popular culture and the zeitgeist. Join us for a heady mélange of juries, judges, the nature of consciousness, physics, metaphysics, the multiverse, the Oracle at Delphi, edibles before dinner, something tangentially related to the law, and the illusory feeling of having a self, won’t you? The post Sidebar Ep 8: Post-Ownership Society appeared first on DOAR.

Sidebar Ep 7: Are jurors seeing rigged systems everywhere?

October 24th, 2018|

In DOAR’s web series “Sidebar,” Jury Consultant Roy Futterman, Ph.D. provides his insights, analysis and commentary on the state of the world from the intersection of the legal system, popular culture and the zeitgeist. Join us for a heady mélange of juries, judges, the nature of consciousness, physics, metaphysics, the multiverse, the Oracle at Delphi, edibles before dinner, something tangentially related to the law, and the illusory feeling of having a self, won’t you? The post Sidebar Ep 7: Are jurors seeing rigged systems everywhere? appeared first on DOAR.

Sidebar Ep 5: Has the MeToo movement affected juries?

August 29th, 2018|

In DOAR’s web series “Sidebar,” Jury Consultant Roy Futterman, Ph.D. provides his insights, analysis and commentary on the state of the world from the intersection of the legal system, popular culture and the zeitgeist. Join us for a heady mélange of juries, judges, the nature of consciousness, physics, metaphysics, the multiverse, the Oracle at Delphi, edibles before dinner, something tangentially related to the law, and the illusory feeling of having a self, won’t you? The post Sidebar Ep 5: Has the MeToo movement affected juries? appeared first on DOAR.

Information Contamination in Bifurcated Trials: Friend or Foe?

August 27th, 2018|

By Natalie Gordon, M.A., DOAR analyst Do you want the good news or the bad news first? We are all familiar with this phrase, and when we use it, it is because we are hoping the bad news will be mitigated by the good news. In other words, we want the positive feeling from the good news to spill over and lessen the blow of the bad news. Concerns about so-called “spillover effects” abound in the legal system. As a result, trial separation (“bifurcation”) is used in cases where evidence about one decision might bias a separate, but related decision.

Roy Futterman discusses Manafort jury questions with Reuters

August 17th, 2018|

While everyone mulls the significance of the Paul Manafort fraud trial jury’s four questions at the end of the first day of deliberations, DOAR Director Roy Futterman cautions against over-analyzing them, based on his experience sweating deliberations. Read the entire article here. The post Roy Futterman discusses Manafort jury questions with Reuters appeared first on DOAR.

Sidebar – Episode 4: Stabilizing

July 27th, 2018|

In DOAR’s web series “Sidebar,” Jury Consultant Roy Futterman, Ph.D. provides his insights, analysis and commentary on the state of the world from the intersection of the legal system, popular culture and the zeitgeist. Join us for a heady mélange of juries, judges, the nature of consciousness, physics, metaphysics, the multiverse, the Oracle at Delphi, edibles before dinner, something tangentially related to the law, and the illusory feeling of having a self, won’t you? The post Sidebar – Episode 4: Stabilizing appeared first on DOAR.