Legal

Chances are, you don't enjoy movies as much as you think you will. That's because movie tickets present us consumers with a tricky problem of incomplete knowledge. We want to buy tickets to movies we'll enjoy, but the only sure way to know how much we'll enjoy a movie is to watch it, and we can't do that unless we've already bought a ticket. So we try to make an educated guess. … [Read more...] about Trial Lawyers and the Winner’s Curse

Jeff Gamso has a fascinating post about the probabilities behind a DNA match. If you do felony criminal law (from either side of the aisle) and I tell you the number is 6.17 quadrillion, you probably assume that I'm talking about DNA. The number will reflect just how unlikely it is that the DNA in the whatever left at the scene could have come from anyone other than the … [Read more...] about The METDI Defense

It looks like filling the next Supreme Court vacancy is yet another area in which I disagree with the Obama administration. CBS News's Jan Crawford says Obama wants "a sparkling intellectual who could go toe to toe with Roberts and Antonin Scalia," but I'd much rather have Scott Greenfield. … [Read more...] about If Not Now, When?

Well, with Justice Stevens retiring from the Supreme Court, it's time to start another round of speculation and wishful thinking about who will get the job this time. I have no idea who the mainstream pundits are pushing for, but I'm always partial to Wise County Deputy Commonwealth Attorney Ken Lammers. He has more criminal law experience than the entire current court … [Read more...] about What Might Have Been…

As a non-lawyer, and as a generally law-abiding citizen, my main interaction with the criminal justice system is going to be as a juror. But over at a public defender, Gideon is saying that jurors don't really understand the presumption of innocence: I have come to believe that that is hogwash. Jurors are smart enough to know what to say. They've also been reading the … [Read more...] about Jurors’ Presumptions