This paper uses data from felony jury trials in North Carolina to show that (i) the race and gender composition of the randomly selected jury pool has a significant effect on the probability of conviction, (ii) attorneys adjust peremptory challenge strategies in accordance, and (iii) State peremptory challenges have a significant positive impact on the conviction rate when the defendant is a bl...

Abstract There is a growing consensus that institutions are linked with economic development, but identifying the effects of institutional changes has proven to be difficult. This book offers new insights by studying the role of political and legal changes in fostering investment during the early transportation revolution in England. First, it argues that the political settlement between Crown ...

The use of juries in civil cases is severely circumscribed in Australia, and only a small percentage of criminal cases are decided by juries.* 1 This percentage, while small, is significant. Only the most serious criminal cases are tried before a jury,2 and it is such cases that tend to generate the greatest amount of public interest. Consequently, “[ljegal ideology and popular commonsense imag...

Democratic and participatory evaluation raises questions of power. Power lies not only in agenda setting and problem definition but also in formulating alternatives. The latter seems to have been forgotten in the literature on democratic evaluation. This may be partly due to the general neglect of assessing alternatives in evaluations, whether ex ante or ex post. The article distinguishes diffe...