some extent, but it is impossible to believe that they can account for such wide variations as these. They can only be taken as indicating a regrettable lack of any common standard. If the majority of courts arc right in concluding that at least half the offenders should be put on probation, then the courts that make as little use of it as some of those just mentioned must be falling below the ...

This article examines how courts are likely to apply evidence-based medicine, and particularly clinical practice guidelines (CPGs), in healthcare litigation involving quality-of-care and entitlement-to-benefits (coverage) claims. Exploring the "politics" of the current situation, it observes that, just as clinicians have been reluctant to use CPGs in practice, courts have been, and likely will ...

Mental health courts (MHCs) are rapidly expanding as a form of diversion from jails and prisons for persons with mental illness charged with crimes. Although intended to be voluntary, little is known about this aspect of the courts. We examined perceptions of voluntariness, and levels of knowingness and legal competence among 200 newly enrolled clients of MHCs at two courts. Although most clien...

In recent years, many courts (and especially the federal courts) have become the focus for the pursuit of goals of major institutional reform in cases brought by advocates for prisoners, mental patients, students, and others.2 These advocates turned to the courts because the legislative and executive branches were unwilling to devote larger shares of scarce resources to improving conditions at ...

The last several decades have seen a proliferation of specialized courts, including within the family court system, that deviate from the adversarial model, and that rely on therapeutic jurisprudence and other problem-solving techniques. Whether and how traditional family courts can incorporate the best practices of these specialized courts is a largely understudied area. Drawing from ethnograp...

As elsewhere in the world, Africa has experienced a rise in litigation against transnational corporations for adverse environmental and social impact. Cape plc and RTZ have been sued in British courts for environmental damage and for breach of employment rights in Africa. Companies which sold products to South Africa’s former apartheid regime, such as Fujitsu and IBM, are now being sued in US c...

All Courts rule ex-post, after most economic decisions are sunk. This can generate a time-inconsistency problem. From an ex-ante perspective, Courts will have the ex-post temptation to be excessively lenient. This observation is at the root of the rule of precedent, known as stare decisis. Stare decisis forces Courts to weigh the benefits of leniency towards the current parties against the bene...

To say that positive political theory (PPT) scholarship on the hierarchy of justice is theory rich and data poor is to make a rather uncontroversial claim. For over a decade now, scholars have offered intriguing theoretical accounts aimed at understanding why lower courts defy (comply with) higher courts. But only rarely do they subject the accounts to rigorous empirical interrogation. The chie...

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to own handguns in the home for protection, invalidating a Washington, D.C. law banning most handgun possession. The Heller decision, however, provided lower courts with little guidance regarding how to judge the constitutionality of gun laws other than handgun bans. Neverthe...