Prosecution or Persecution? Extraneous Events and Prosecutorial Decisions

Extraneous factors in judicial decisions.

Are judicial rulings based solely on laws and facts? Legal formalism holds that judges apply legal reasons to the facts of a case in a rational, mechanical, and deliberative manner. In contrast, legal realists argue that the rational application of legal reasons does not sufficiently explain the decisions of judges and that psychological, political, and social factors influence judicial rulings...

Modeling Decisions Involving Ambiguous, Vague, or Rare Events∗

Almost all models of decision making assume an underlying boolean space of events. This gives a logical structure to events that matches the structure of propositions of classical logic. This chapter takes a different approach, employing events that form a topology instead of a boolean algebra. This allows for new modeling concepts for judgmental heuristics, rare events, and the influence of co...

Plea Bargaining and Prosecutorial Discretion

Opioid-induced hyperalgesia: clinically relevant or extraneous research phenomenon?

Opioids have become the unequivocal therapy of choice in treating many varieties of chronic pain. With the increased prescription of opioids, some unintended consequences have occurred. After prolonged opioid exposure, opioid-induced hyperalgesia (OIH), the paradoxical effect that opioid therapy may in fact enhance or aggravate preexisting pain, may occur. Over the past several decades, an incr...

Criminal or merely human?: the prosecution of negligent doctors.