Prove It with Figures: Empirical Methods in Law and Litigation

1 The Search for Causes: An Overview.- 2 The Controlled Randomized Experiment.- 2.1 A nearly perfect experiment.- 2.2 Eliminating bias in selecting subjects.- 2.3 Limits to experimentation.- 2.4 The half-a-loaf experiment.- 2.5 Simulation.- 2.6 Limits to extrapolation.- Critical questions.- 3 Inferring Causes from Observational Studies.- 3.1 Diphtheria antitoxin.- 3.2 The Connecticut crackdown on speeders.- 3.3 Capital punishment in Florida.- 3.4 Polio vaccines.- 3.5 Police intervention and domestic violence.- 3.6 No-fault divorce.- 3.7 Statistical "control" for known confounders.- 3.8 Summary.- Critical questions.- 4 Epidemiologic Studies.- 4.1 Types of studies.- 4.2 Agent Orange.- 4.3 Breast implants.- 4.4 Tobacco smoke.- 4.5 Asbestos.- 4.6 Bendectin.- 4.7 Electromagnetic fields.- 4.8 Summary.- 5 Summing Up: Replication and Triangulation.- 5.1 Estimating socially significant numbers.- 5.2 Triangulations in the census.- 5.3 Unanimity and hung juries.- 5.4 Opposition to the death penalty and.- the propensity to vote guilty.- 5.5 Sentence variation from judge to judge.- 6 Coincidence and Significance.- 6.1 P-values.- 6.2 Significance.- 6.3 Power.- 6.4 One-tailed and two-tailed tests.- 6.5 Multiple testing.- 6.6 Interval estimates.- 6.7 Other hypotheses.- 6.8 Posterior probabilities.- Critical questions.- 7 Sampling.- 7.1 The road to the acceptance of sampling.- 7.2 The miracle of sampling.- 7.3 Some sources of bias.- 7.4 Drawing a probability sample.- 7.5 Sample size.- 7.6 The danger of mail surveys: nonresponse bias.- 7.7 Quota samples.- 7.8 Convenience samples.- 7.9 Summary.- Critical questions.- 8 Content Analysis.- 8.1 A study of the House Un-American.- Activities Committee.- 8.2 Pretrial publicity.- 8.3 The Federalist Papers.- 9 Surveys and Change of Venue.- 9.1 History of survey acceptance.- 9.2 Change of venue law.- 9.3 Mitsubishi in Silicon Valley.- 9.4 The Pontiac prison cases.- 9.5 Civil litigation.- 9.6 The limits of voir dire.- 10 Trademark Surveys: Genericness.- 10.1 The Thermos surveys.- 10.2 The Teflon surveys.- 10.3 Variations of the Teflon survey.- 11 Trademark Surveys: Confusion.- 11.1 Realism.- 11.2 How close a look?.- 11.3 Who puts out this design?.- 11.4 Altering the specimen.- 11.5 Controlling for "top of mind" responses.- 11.6 Anticipating market entry.- 11.7 Addressing the relevant issue.- 11.8 Depressors and aggrandizers.- 11.9 Summary.- 12 The Jury: Composition and Selection.- 12.1 Jury size.- 12.2 Selecting the jury venire.- 12.3 Selecting from the venire.- 12.4 Juror selection surveys.- 13 DNA Profiling: Probabilities and Proof.- 13.1 VNTR profiling.- 13.2 Match windows.- 13.3 Match probabilities and the basic product rule.- 13.4 Objections to the basic product rule.- 13.5 Ceiling frequencies.- 13.6 Uniqueness.- 13.7 Random match probabilities and prejudice.- 13.8 Beyond matching and binning.- Notes.- List of Cases.