Overview of Jury Research

Prof. Shari Seidman Diamond looks at the state of jury research in Beyond Fantasy and Nightmare: A Portrait of the Jury, 54 Buffalo L. Rev. 717 (2006).

This is a very helpful introduction to the field. Prof. Diamond begins by laying out 10 common claims about juries -- e.g., that civil juries are pro-plaintiff, that jury selection determines the outcome of cases, that juries defer to high-status experts, and so on. Then she discusses the methodologies social scientists have used to try to test these claims and discusses "what we have learned (and not learned) from empirical studies of the jury."

A pdf copy is available on her faculty profile page.