In this project, we are experimentally testing the importance of burdens of proof in determining the validity of a patent in litigation. The genesis of these experiments is the Supreme Court decision in Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Limited P'ship, 131 S. Ct. 2238 (2011). In i4i, the Court rejected Microsoft's claim that a jury need only be persuaded by a preponderance of the evidence to find a patent...

Francesco Redi (1626-1697) was a scientist and writer of highest level. He spent his career at Medicean Court, where he developed a profound literary and philological knowledge, but specialising in the life sciences. Redi brought together erudition and a genuine experimental spirit, being the first to apply the experimental method to the life sciences. It was above all during the reign of Ferdi...

New procedures, tailored after such court decisions as Rogers v. Commissioner of the Department of Mental Health, have restricted the doctor's ability to treat psychiatric inpatients with psychotropic medication and have increased the protection of a competent patient's right to refuse. This study investigates how the relationship between the doctor and the court has adapted to these new proced...

An explosion of Eighth Amendment challenges to lethal injection protocols has struck the federal courts. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Hill v. McDonough,1 which empowered prisoners to bring challenges to lethal injection procedures under 42 U.S.C. para. 1983, has facilitated a flood of new lethal injection cases. In response, several courts have ordered states to alter their protocols,...

Public support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage increased markedly in Canada over the course of the 1990s. While changes in fundamental values likely account for part of the increase, the speed and magnitude of aggregate opinion change in this domain casts some doubt on strictly sociological explanations for the shift. The argument of this paper is that a sequence of high-profile Supr...

There is perhaps no other sector that reflects the fractured nature of civil society in the United States more than public education. Despite a Supreme Court decision calling for schools to be racially integrated, public schools across the United States remain largely segregated with respect to the race and class make-up of their student populations (Orfield and Eaton 1996). Public schools are ...

Nearly a decade after the Federal Circuit decision in State Street, patents on computerimplemented methods of doing business have become commonplace. To date, there is little evidence of any effect on the rate of innovation or R&D among firms in financial services. Indeed, measuring such effects presents difficult problems for researchers. We do know that some of these patents are successfully ...

Behavioral science data included in an amicus brief has been introduced into a recent Supreme Court decision (Thompson v. Oklahoma) involving the juvenile death penalty. However, a close examination of the data fails to provide support for either the pro- or antijuvenile death penalty position.