Notebook per
Legal reasoning
Citation (APA): LANDSBURG, S. (2014). Legal reasoning [Kindle Android version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Parte introduttiva
Nota - Posizione 1
gli uomini del diritto nn sanno stimare l evidenza la quantità conta: oltre ogni ragionevole dubbio come reagiscono gli avvocati? [combinazioni di x elementi presi a gruppi di z prr combinazioni di y elementi presi a gruppi di q] 98% blackstone e il ragionevole dubbio la pratica dei tribunali? i cardini della pena giusta: alla ricerca dello standard ideale xchè lo standard deve restare nel vago? un ipotesi
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 1
Law School Admissions Test
Nota - Posizione 1
t
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 1
Here I have a couple of urns. The one on the left contains 70 red balls and 30 black. The one on the right contains 30 red and 70 black. While you weren’t looking, I reached into one of these urns and randomly drew out a dozen balls. As you can see, 4 of them were red and 8 were black.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4
three questions
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 4
to answer if you want to be in the business of assessing evidence:
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 5
1. If you had to guess, which urn would you guess I drew from? 2. What’s your estimate of the odds that you’re right? 3. Do you think you’re right beyond a reasonable doubt?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 8
Howard Raiffa,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 8
Reasonable Doubts
Nota - Posizione 9
t
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 16
cocktail party
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 17
a group of lawyers,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 20
“I would bet you drew from the left-hand urn”.
Nota - Posizione 20
x UN AVVCATO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 22
life is just plain perverse,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 23
the evidence was in favor of the right-hand urn. “But by how much?”
Nota - Posizione 24
ALTRI AVVOCATI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 25
from 50-50 to 55-45, but “…as lawyers we are trained to be skeptical,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 26
The correct answer is about 98%.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 27
beyond a reasonable doubt.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 28
even my statistics students
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 34
Is Raiffa right that 98% is “beyond a reasonable doubt”?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 35
There’s not much in life that we can be more than 98% sure of.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 37
If you’re unwilling to convict on this evidence, then you’re ipso facto willing to free 49 guilty men before you’ll convict a single innocent.
Nota - Posizione 38
x IL RAGIONEVOLE DUBBIO IN UN CASO DEL GENERE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 38
Blackstone Standard,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 38
“it is better that ten guilty men escape than that one innocent suffer”.
Nota - Posizione 39
x BLACKJACK ONE STANDARD
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 39
A few more remarks:
Nota - Posizione 39
t
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 40
Sasha Volokh
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 41
has documented a long tradition that encompasses a wide range of numbers, some as high as 100 or more.
Nota - Posizione 41
x TRADIZIONI IPSRGARANTISTE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 47
as an empirical matter, potential jurors appear to set their cutoff for conviction at something like 70-74% certainty.
Nota - Posizione 48
x STANDARD EMPIRICO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 55
Reasoning About Reasonableness
Nota - Posizione 55
t
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 56
What is the right standard
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 57
70%? 80%? 90%?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 57
vary with the crime
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 63
Lowering the reasonable doubt standard from, say, 95% to 90% means that more innocents will suffer from false convictions while fewer innocents will suffer from being murdered
Nota - Posizione 64
x EFFETTI DELL ABBASSARE LO STANDARD
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 64
assess the trade-off,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 82
Our personalities and our life circumstances are assigned to us randomly. If John happens to be born with a more murderous personality than Jane, it does not clearly follow, as a matter of public policy, that we should put less weight on his interests.
Nota - Posizione 83
x DECISIONE COMUNITARIA DIETRO IL VELO D IGNORANZA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 84
when the reasonable-doubt threshhold is set too low, it invites abuse by manipulative prosecutors. It’s easier to fake evidence that someone is 70%-likely
Nota - Posizione 85
x ABUSI DEGLI OPERATORI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 87
Blinded Justice
Nota - Posizione 87
t
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 89
raises the question: What is the standard? Here’s the weird part: Nobody knows. The judges won’t tell you and neither will the legislators. If you’re on a jury, you’re on your own.
Nota - Posizione 90
x LO STRANO CASO DELLO STANDARD IGNOTO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 91
We want to leave it to jurors to set this standard.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 91
two separate questions
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 91
“How doubtful am I?”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 92
“How much doubt counts as reasonable?”.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 93
Suppose that in a murder trial, the foreman of the jury reports back to the judge that the jurors have agreed that there’s a 15% chance the defendant is guilty, and that they consider 15% to be beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore they have unanimously voted to convict. I am not a lawyer, but I will cheerfully bet you that in any such case, the judge would throw the conviction out in a hurry, on the grounds that 15% is not at all beyond reasonable.
Nota - Posizione 96
x ASSURDI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 98
What is that number? I bet the judge won’t tell you.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 99
Why not?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 100
Now you might respond that it’s often very difficult to be sure whether you’re more or less than 90% certain of something.
Nota - Posizione 100
x I IPOTESI
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 101
it’s also very difficult to be sure whether your doubt is more or less than “reasonable”. So jurors have a difficult job either way. But it’s easier to solve one hard question (”How doubtful am I?”) than to solve two hard questions (”How doubtful am I?” and “Is that a reasonable amount of doubt?”). 90% is a target. It’s often hard to know whether you’ve hit the target, but life is easier when you at least know what you’re aiming at.
Nota - Posizione 103
x RISPOSTA: MEGLIO AVERE UN PROB CHE DUE
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 105
Ideally the standard should come from the legislature,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 107
decision about what constitutes “too many” is a political decision,
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 108
politicians shirk their duty
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 109
Why?
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 109
I strongly suspect it’s primarily to make the jury’s job as hard as possible so as to drag out the deliberations and make more work for judges.
Nota - Posizione 110
x IPOTESI ESOTERICA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 114
Is “Legal Reasoning” an Oxymoron? at
Nota - Posizione 114
xchè la statistica è bandita dai tribunali? tutte le evidenze sono statistiche: il caso dell infarto lo strano caso dei gemelli assassini
Nota - Posizione 115
t
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 117
A defendant fires 95 shots into the woods; his friend fires 5. A man in the woods is hit by a bul et and dies. The defendant is 95% certain to be the kil er (in other words, he is the kil er beyond a reasonable doubt), but he is acquitted because the nature of the evidence is “statistical” and therefore cannot be the basis of a conviction.
Nota - Posizione 120
x IL CASO: L EVIDENZA STATISTICA NN CONTA
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 121
legal “education”
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 121
having your capacity for logic beaten entirely out of you.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 122
all evidence is statistical
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 123
I put a bul et through your heart and you take five minutes to die. Did the bul et cause your death? Wel , not certainly— there’s some smal chance that you died of a heart attack that would have kil ed you anyway, thirty seconds before the bul et was able to finish its job. Is there a high probability I caused your death? Yes. Did I do so beyond a reasonable doubt? Yes. Is the remaining doubt of a statistical nature? Yes.
Nota - Posizione 126
x TUTTO È STATISTICA ESEMPIO
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 129
let me take this opportunity to present a related conundrum: Two identical twins each kil a random stranger.
Evidenzia (giallo) - Posizione 131
There is therefore no reasonable doubt that each twin committed a murder, but only a 50% chance that any given twin committed either particular murder. Question 1: Can we convict them of anything under current law? My guess is no.
Nota - Posizione 133
x ASSASSINI INNOCENTI
