Miscellaneous

Footnote 17

By Bill Gratsch

A blog post from Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog has been making the rounds this week across the blawgosphere and in the legal press.  The post, A Warning About Litigant-Funded Research in Supreme Court Cases, highlights a footnote in Justice David Souter's opinion in EXXON SHIPPING CO. ET AL. v. BAKER ET AL.

Mr. Hasen found this footnote below "troubling:"

The Court is aware of a body of literature running parallel to anecdotal reports, examining the predictability of punitive awards by conducting numerous "mock juries," where different "jurors" are confronted with the same hypothetical case. See, e.g., C. Sunstein, R. Hastie, J. Payne, D. Schkade, W. Viscusi, Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide (2002); Schkade, Sunstein, & Kahneman, Deliberating About Dollars: The Severity Shift, 100 Colum. L. Rev. 1139 2000); Hastie, Schkade, & Payne, Juror Judgments in Civil Cases: Effects of Plaintiff's Requests and Plaintiff's Identity in Punitive Damage Awards, 23 Law & Hum. Behav. 445 (1999); Sunstein, Kahneman, & Schkade, Assessing Punitive Damages (with Notes on Cognition and Valuation in Law), 107 Yale L. J. 2071 (1998). Because this research was funded in part by Exxon, we decline to rely on it. [Mr. Hasen's emphasis]

You can read his post to find out why: A Warning About Litigant-Funded Research in Supreme Court Cases

Other weblogs discussing the topic:

Justice Souter and the Mystery of Footnote 17 - WSJ Law Blog

Capture & Academic Punitive Damages Research - Concurring Opinions 

Full post as published by Blawgs Blog by Bill Gratsch on July 09, 2008 (boomark / email).