Richard Lempert

The effects of graduate training on reasoning: Formal discipline and thinking about everyday life events

The theory of formal disciplinenthat is, the view that instruction in abstract rule systems can affect reasoning about everyday-life eventsnhas been rejected by 20th century psychologists on the basis of rather scant evidence. We examined the effects of graduate training in law, medicine, psychology, and chemistry on statistical reasoning, methodological reasoning about confounded variables, and reasoning about problems in the logic of the conditional Both psychology and medical training produced large effects on statistical and methodological reasoning, and psychology, medical, and law training pro- duced effects on ability to reason about problems in the logic of the conditional Chemistry training had no effect on any type of reasoning studied. These results seem well understood in terms of the rule systems taught by the various fields and indicate that a version of the formal discipline hypothesis is correct.

Under the Influence? Drugs and the American Work Force

Drug use in the workplace, its effect on performance and safety, and the role of workplace drug testing has received much attention in the popular press. But what do we actually know about this troubling issue? With an extensive and readable overview of the literature, the committee presents what we do know by examining the major issues: * The extent and severity of drug use on and off the job. * The strengths and weaknesses of methods for detecting drug use through standard drug tests. * The effect of drug use on behavior, including the results of both laboratory and field studies that have examined work-related behavior and worker productivity. * The effectiveness of interventions to deal with drug use, such as employee assistance programs, health promotion programs, and treatment programs for substance abuse. This volume will be of practical interest to human resource and employee assistance program managers, policymakers, and investigators.

Humility is a Virtue: On the Publicization of Policy-Relevant Research

In their paper in this issue Sherman and Cohn (1989) respond to arguments I made in this journal about when research is ripe for publicity. This paper continues the conversation by pointing out that policy-relevant research may be publicized at three levels: (1) in professional journals, (2) directly to those practitioners whose practice decisions might be informed by the research results, and (3) through the mass media. I then argue that the reliability of the results, the ability to communicate main findings precisely, and the likely effects of publicity are keys to responsible publicization at all levels. In weighing these factors researchers must regulate themselves, but to guide them the law and society community should seek to develop professional norms. I comment on some of the considerations that should guide such norms, using the Minneapolis Domestic Violence Experiment and the publicity it received as an example.

Strategies of Research Design in the Legal Impact Study: The Control of Plausible Rival Hypotheses

A legal impact study represents an attempt to ascertain how a particular law affects the conduct and attitudes of those individuals, groups or other relevant units located in jurisdictions where that law is in force. By its very nature such a study involves one essential comparison; the comparison between actual behavior patterns in jurisdictions having the law in question and the behavior patterns which would have existed in those same jurisdictions had the law in question never been enacted. Since this comparison is one which by definition cannot actually be made, the problem for the legal impact theorist is how to estimate best what the behavior patterns

Policy Forum: Studying Eyewitness Investigations in the Field

This article considers methodological issues arising from recent efforts to provide field tests of eyewitness identification procedures. We focus in particular on a field study (Mecklenburg 2006) that examined the “double blind, sequential” technique, and consider the implications of an acknowledged methodological confound in the study. We explain why the confound has severe consequences for assessing the real-world implications of this study.

Organizing for Deterrence: Lessons from a Study of Child Support

This study reanalyzes data collected by David Chambers on the enforcement of child support orders in Michigan. It finds that organizational factors interact with sanction factors to determine levels of general deterrence. Where the agency charged with enforcing child support orders, the Friend of the Court, is proactive and jail is a relatively common punishment for those who persist in not paying, overall collection rates are markedly higher than where neither or only one of these factors exist. The study also examines special deterrence and finds a special deterrent effect apparently associated with the experience of being jailed for failing to pay support. In the course of the investigation a number of contingencies important to deterrence theory are identified, and a behavioral response to threat-the avoidance response-is defined.

The Value of Counsel: 20 Years of Representation before a Public Housing Eviction Board

Research into the effects of legal representation is rare because in many settings in which people might have lawyers, legal representation is either so common or so unusual that it cannot serve as a variable. Moreover, such research as exists is often poorly controlled or otherwise methodologically deficient. Our data set, derived from the case files of a public housing eviction board, allows us to overcome most of the difficulties that plague prior studies because it is relatively large and unusually rich in information about individual cases. We model the effects of various tenant and case characteris-

The Effect of Executions on Homicides: A New Look in an Old Light

Professor Isaac Ehrlich, in his well-known article on the death penalty, argues that previous research on the deterrent effects of capital punishment, as exemplified by the work of Thorsten Sellin, is inadequate because it focuses on the wrong issue and because it fails to control for relevant variables. Ehrlichs first point is that if one is searching for deterrence it is the law in action (i.e., the actu al incidence of executions) rather than the law on the books (i.e., the presence or absence of the death penalty) which is crucial. His second point is that in order to spot deterrent effects other factors which might affect homicide rates, such as conviction rates and unemployment rates, must be held constant. Many of those who believe that Ehrlichs work is fundamentally flawed nevertheless accept these criticisms.

Norm-Making in Social Exchange: A Contract Law Model

In recent years sociologists have become increasingly aware of and interested in legal environments and the characteristics of legal systems. This burgeoning interest in the law as a subject of sociological inquiry has not, however, brought with it an appreciation of the possibility that legal skills or knowledge may elucidate questions of interest to students of social systems generally. Law is arguably relevant to many sociological issues which make normative arrangements problematic. This is because a legal code represents a formalized (and often idealized) statement of those norms which are considerd basic in a particular society. It was the genius of Emile Durkheim (1964) to recognize that the quality of legal remedies in a system could provide a good operational indicator of the way in which that society sought to answer the Hobbesean question of maintaining order. The Division of Labor in Society (1964) draws heavily on this insight.

Grievances and Legitimacy: The Beginnings and End of Dispute Settlement

The study of dispute settlement within the sociology of law has, for the most part, been organized around institutionalized processes of dispute settlement, which typically has meant around dispute settlement institutions. Although some researchers-notably in anthropology-have provided detailed natural histories of disputes, including information about denouements, most dispute settlement research has focused on the immediate inputs into the institutions of dispute settlement, on processes of dispute settlement, and on dispute resolutions both as outcomes of processes and outputs of institutions. Inputs of interest have included, on the one hand, parties and their representatives and, on the other, the disputes parties bring. Process has been broadly defined to include actions that occur within dispute settlement institutions and also organized patterns of behavior, such as Eskimo song duels, that may not be institution bound. Outcomes and outputs are typically confounded and operationalized as the decisions of institutions, although we know that in some settings these decisions do not necessarily determine party outcome.1 A striking feature of the current symposium is the number of articles in which dispute settlement institutions are a peripheral rather than central concern. Thus we follow individuals with grievances as their grievances are transformed into informal and then escalated disputes (Felstiner et al., 1981; Miller and Sarat, 1981). We consider, from an economic perspective, the costs and rationality of avoiding disputes (Gollop and Marquardt, 1981), and we examine the implications of lawyer compensation schemes for the litigation of legal controversies (Johnson, 1981).