Can Judges Change the Verdict of a Runaway Jury? [POLICYbrief]
Short video featuring Clark Neily
Short video featuring Clark Neily
Perhaps you've heard of the term “runaway jury,” but what does it mean? Clark Neily, Vice President for Criminal Justice at the CATO Institute explains the role of judges in civil cases and outlines how judges can play a bigger role in reining in runaway jury verdicts.
As always, the Federalist Society takes no position on particular legal or public policy issues; all expressions of opinion are those of the speaker.
Learn more about Clark Neily:
https://www.cato.org/people/clark-neily
Follow Clark Neily on Twitter: @ConLawWarrior
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Related Links:
Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/publications/deborah-j-lafetra-reviews-punitive-damages-how-juries-decide-by-cass-r-sunstein-reid-hastie-john-w-payne-david-a-schkade-and-w-kip-viscusi
Our Broken Justice System
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/mayjune-2019/our-broken-justice-system
The Civil Jury: Constitutional Liberty or Unhealthy Romance?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcHZcctFWvc
Is Tort Reform Conservative?
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/videos/is-tort-reform-conservative-event-video
A Study’s Verdict: Jury Awards Are Not Out of Control
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/06/us/a-study-s-verdict-jury-awards-are-not-out-of-control.html
Differing Views:
“Deep Pocket Jurisprudence” and Meaningful Civil Justice Reform
https://fedsoc.org/commentary/podcasts/deep-pocket-jurisprudence-and-meaningful-civil-justice-reform-podcast
Media Reporting of Jury Verdicts: Is the Tail (of the Distribution) Wagging the Dog?
https://escholarship.org/content/qt7bh6914b/qt7bh6914b.pdf
Empirical Research and Civil Jury Reform
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1414&context=facpub
Research on Tort Reform
https://www.rand.org/topics/tort-reform.html
Senior Vice President for Legal Studies, Cato Institute
Clark Neily is senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute. His areas of interest include constitutional law, overcriminalization, civil forfeiture, police accountability, and gun rights. Neily is the author of Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and National Review Online, as well as various law reviews, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, George Mason Law Review, Georgetown Journal of Law and Public Policy, NYU Journal of Law and Liberty, and Texas Review of Law and Politics. Neily is a frequent guest speaker and lecturer for the Federalist Society, Institute for Humane Studies, and American Constitution Society.
Before joining Cato in 2017, Neily was a senior attorney and constitutional litigator at the Institute for Justice and director of the Institute’s Center for Judicial Engagement. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Texas School of Law, where he teaches constitutional litigation and public-interest law.
Neily served as co-counsel in District of Columbia v. Heller, the historic case in which the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for self-defense.
Neily began his legal career as a law clerk to Judge Royce Lamberth on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After that he spent four years in the trial department of the Dallas-based firm Thompson & Knight. Neily received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Texas, where he was Chief Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review.