Full Citation

Title: Justice for Hire: Financial Incentives in Jury Deliberation

Citation Type: Conference Paper

Publication Year: 2008

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Abstract: Trial by one's peers is a foundation of the American legal system. In this paper, I present evidence that in addition to legally relevant facts, financial incentives influence the jury deliberation process. I take advantage of cross county variation in the opportunity cost of serving as a juror, and find that a 10% increase in juror compensation increases the time juries spend deliberating by 5%. While preliminary, these results suggest that the opportunity cost of jurors' time does influence how long they spend determining legal culpability, which has implications for legal and sociological research on deliberation length and judicial outcomes. In addition, jurors are able to choose they number of hours they work without the typical labor demand constraints faced by workers, and in particular low wage workers. My results suggest that the failure of existing empirical studies to identify an intensive labor supply response to wage changes is due to incorrect specification of the demand for low wage labor and measurement error in hours worked.

Url: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1120336

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Authors: Owens, Emily G

Conference Name: 3rd Annual Conference on Empirical Legal Studies

Publisher Location:

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure

Countries: United States