Legal Concerns
Frame Backfire: The Trouble with Civil Rights Appeals in the Contemporary United States
Fabiana Silva, Irene Bloemraad & Kim Voss
American Sociological Review, June 2025, Pages 349-386
Abstract:
Many scholars and activists consider civil rights to be a powerful, effective way to frame diverse causes, but do civil rights claims actually resonate? Building on social movements, collective memory, and public opinion scholarship, we conceptualize civil rights claims in three non-mutually-exclusive ways: as a highly resonant "master frame" grounded in core American ideals of equal rights, as an appeal to the idealized memory of the Civil Rights Movement, and as racialized messaging that is likely to provoke backlash. Using these conceptualizations, we derive expectations about the effectiveness of civil rights claims across diverse issues, beneficiaries, and audiences, which we test using two large-scale survey experiments. Respondents viewed "civil rights" very positively in the abstract and broadly agreed about the meaning in both closed and open-ended survey responses: civil rights are about ensuring equal rights and treatment, rather than addressing material needs. Yet, surprisingly, framing contemporary problems -- even unequal treatment -- as civil rights violations reduced support for government intervention. Indeed, we find widespread frame backfire: civil rights framing was counterproductive across issues (material deprivation, unequal treatment), beneficiaries (African Americans, Mexican Americans, White Americans, undocumented Mexican immigrants), and audiences (liberals, conservatives, Whites, African Americans, Latinos). Given the consistently negative effects across respondents, these findings cannot be adequately explained as racialized backlash. Instead, we propose that civil rights claims evoke comparisons to the historic Civil Rights Movement, making contemporary hardships appear less significant and prompting unfavorable contrasts with idealized claims-making of the past. Our findings challenge assumptions that frames resonate when they align with audiences' values or appeal to positive collective memories; indeed, invoking idealized memories risks undermining support for contemporary causes.
When Do Citizens Resist The Use of AI Algorithms in Public Policy? Theory and Evidence
Shir Raviv
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Government agencies increasingly use algorithmic decision systems (ADS) to assist or replace human judgment across various policy areas such as criminal justice, welfare, and education. How do citizens view the incorporation of this technology in guiding high-stakes decisions? I introduce a new theory to explain the conditions under which citizens view ADS as legitimate, fair, and accurate, and test it using data from original experiments embedded in a national U.S. survey. I show that across a wide range of policy domains, citizens strongly oppose using ADS in decisions that are seen as designed to sanction rather than to assist and when they are required to make inferences about individuals rather than collectives. Evidence from a second experiment suggests that using ADS in these contexts can significantly undermine the legitimacy of the policy interventions they inform. The study offers a framework to identify where AI-based tools will be deemed appropriate and where they might trigger a backlash, underscoring the importance of accounting for citizens' values and concerns in governing AI.
AI Gets Its First Law School A+s
Andrew Blair-Stanek et al.
University of Maryland Working Paper, May 2025
Abstract:
We had o3, OpenAI's new reasoning model, take our Spring 2025 law school final exams with the "reasoning effort" parameter set to high. We graded o3's answers on the same curve as our students. Three semesters ago, we found the older model GPT-4-turbo's outputs would have received grades ranging between B+ and D. This semester, we find o3 got three A+s, one A, one A-, two B+s, and a B. We find clear, fixable explanations for two of o3's lowest grades.
Does Descriptive Representation of Women on the Bench Improve Institutional Trust?
Laura Moyer
Journal of Law and Courts, forthcoming
Abstract:
An often-used normative argument for increasing judicial diversity is that it will enhance public confidence in courts. This paper tests competing perspectives about whether the descriptive representation of women in the federal judiciary will improve institutional trust, using a nationally representative survey experiment. The findings suggest that, in the post-Dobbs era, descriptive representation for gender on low visibility courts yields a positive effect on institutional trust, but that the magnitude of the effect is quite small, time limited, and restricted to Democrats and to those who already have higher levels of trust.
Lady Justice: The impact of female judges on jury trial verdicts in North Carolina
Alessandra Foresta
European Journal of Political Economy, June 2025
Abstract:
This study evaluates the impact of judges' gender on jury trial outcomes in the U.S. state of North Carolina. The identification strategy is based on conditional random assignment of judges to cases. Specifically, I take advantage of the compulsory judges' rotation imposed by the North Carolina Constitution. The results indicate that the presence of a female judge increases of 9.64-13.50 percentage points the probability of having at least one guilty verdict from the jury and of 9.5%-13.45% increase in the proportion of guilty verdicts expressed by the jury. Additionally, I perform a series of robustness and heterogeneity checks. I also investigate the potential mechanisms driving the results, exploring the influence of the jury selection process and women's attitudes toward the courts and sentencing.
Pardoning Corporations
Brandon Stras
University of Chicago Law Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Though the Pardon Clause could be interpreted to include or exclude corporate offenses, overlooked history suggests the broader interpretation is the more plausible one. The Clause codified a power that had existed for centuries in England. And corporations were often pardoned at common law -- including the Massachusetts Bay Company. This tradition lasted for hundreds of years, and it is the backdrop against which the Framers drafted the Pardon Clause. Even following the Founding, people continued to understand that the pardon power stretched to corporations. Since that time, however, institutional memory has faded. The President could condition forgiveness on corporate compliance programs or on donations to his political campaign. He could offer pardons to foreign companies to sweeten relations with other countries. He could effectively abolish corporate criminal liability during his terms, at least at the federal level, even for prosecutions initiated by independent agencies. He could pardon his own companies to protect them from prosecution. Or he might even pardon companies that bribed him. Given the sweeping pardon power in Article II, all these decisions fall within the President's discretion. He does not even need to wait for a company to apply. Some of these consequences are startling, but Congress can limit the pardon power's effects in two ways. First, Congress can refuse to appropriate refunds of pardoned fines. At the time of writing, Congress has not appropriated such refunds for individuals or companies. That decision denies people reprieve from the most common, and often most consequential, punishments imposed on companies. Second, Congress can repeal statutes that impose corporate criminal liability and replace them with unpardonable civil infractions, depriving the President of offenses to pardon. Some state constitutions might also include a power to pardon companies. Though this account is more tentative, some attorneys could be more effective advocates if they encouraged their corporate clients to apply for pardons. Federal juries convict around 100 companies per year; states impose the rest of the corporate criminal liability. In most states, there is little authority one way or the other, which creates opportunities for good lawyering. This is important because, even if the President never pardons a company again, some state governments might consider doing so. Alaska's Governor already did, and that pardon is unlikely to be alone forever.
Understanding the Impact of Forensic Evidence on Homicide Clearance: An Analysis of Los Angeles Homicide Cases, 1990-2010
Craig Uchida & Marc Swatt
Justice Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Homicide clearance rates have dropped considerably between the 1960s and 1990s, a period called the Great Decline. Recently researchers have argued that one of the factors leading to the Great Decline was the increase in prosecutors demand for forensic evidence to proceed with prosecution. Using a unique sample of 4,111 homicide investigator case files, or "murder books," from 1990 to 2010 compiled and digitized by the Los Angeles Police Department, this research examines the impact of forensic evidence on homicide clearance. Forensic evidence had an independent impact on homicide clearance after controlling for victim characteristics, homicide circumstances, and contextual variables. The collection of fingerprints and gun casings was associated with increased odds of clearance. Other contextual, victim, and circumstance variables on homicide clearance remained important for predicting clearance and are discussed.
Assembly-Line Public Defense
David Abrams & Priyanka Goonetilleke
NYU Law Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Each year, millions of Americans rely on public defenders to fulfill their Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Despite being the linchpin of the criminal justice system, public defense remains both underfunded and understudied. This article provides empirical analysis to contribute to a critical question: How should public defender systems be structured? Criminal justice advocates, scholars, and the American Bar Association strongly favor vertical representation in public defense. Under this model, a single public defender represents a defendant throughout their case, from initial appearance through sentencing. The alternative approach -- horizontal representation -- operates like an assembly line: Different attorneys handle each stage of a case, from preliminary hearings to pretrial conferences to trials. The preference for vertical representation stems from the intuitive belief that continuity of representation improves outcomes for defendants. However, no prior empirical work has tested this assumption. Using a natural experiment created by the Defender Association of Philadelphia's transition from a fully horizontal representation system to a partially vertical one, we find no evidence that increasing attorney continuity improves defendant outcomes. These findings have significant implications for how public defender offices should allocate their scarce resources. While vertical representation is considered by many as the ideal, our results cast doubt on whether the additional resources and logistical challenges relative to horizontal representation are justified given the current reality of underfunded public defense. As jurisdictions nationwide grapple with a chronic lack of resources for public defense, this article provides crucial empirical evidence to inform decisions about how best to uphold defendants' Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
Cash bail and pretrial compliance: Evidence from a court-imposed policy shock
Jennifer Copp
Criminology & Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We evaluated the impact of an administrative order issued in the early days of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that aimed to reduce the size of the pretrial population in Palm Beach County, FL, by reducing bond amounts for eligible felony offenses. Our findings revealed that the administrative order was successful in reducing the average bond amounts for individuals charged with eligible felonies and that these reductions corresponded to (1) increases in the likelihood of pretrial release and (2) declines in the average custody length. Furthermore, despite these changes to the odds and pace of pretrial release, we found no evidence to suggest that the administrative order negatively affected pretrial compliance, including new criminal activity and failure to appear in court.