Self-study
P1
In recent years, scholars have begun to use social science tools to analyze court opinions. ███
Intro to Topic ·
Social science tools to analyze court opinions
Not sure what this means, but that's fine, will keep reading.
Critique ·
Of traditional legal research
Traditional legal research has problems. Author agrees with this. This is why scholars are using social science techniques.
Example of New Method ·
Zirkel
Use social science techniques to analyze gender discrimination in employment.
Critique ·
Author thinks "outcomes analysis" is misguided
I take it that "outcomes analysis" is Zirkel's social science technique. I predict that the next paragraph will tell us why the author thinks that's misguided.
P2
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Questionable Assumption ·
Simply counting success will be helpful
So... simply counting the number of successful v. unsuccessful plaintiffs will not be helpful to prospective plaintiffs. Why?
Reason 1 ·
Prospective plaintiffs don't find this evidence persuasive
Okay...
Reason 2 ·
Details of the cases are too different
Ah, this makes sense. The cases are too different: quality of evidence; attitude of judge; types of cases; etc. For "outcome analysis" to be predictively useful, a major assumption is that the cases are relevantly similar.
P3
███ █████████ ██████████ █████ ████ ██████ ████████████ ██ ██████ ███████ █████ ██ █████████ ███ ██████████████ ██████ ███
Altnerative Methods ·
More useful
Method 1 ·
Reading opinions / policy capturing
Researcher reads opinions to figure out which variables the judge thought was important in deciding the case. It then uses statistical methods to figure out the causal impact of those variables.
Method 2 ·
Reading transcripts
Researcher reads transcripts to figure out which variables and kinds of evidence contributed to the verdict. Presumably the researchers also use statistical tools to figure out causal impact.
Benefit ·
These methods can help parties assess outcome of a potential case
Passage Style
Critique or debate
Problem-analysis
19.
The policy-capturing approach differs from ███ ████████ █████████ ██
a
makes use of ████████ ███████████ ██ █ ███████ ██████ ██ █████
Not supported, because we have no evidence that the transcript-reading approach involves a greater number of cases. Although this approach involves reading transcripts “during a certain time period,” we have no idea whether the number of cases from that time period must be greater than the number of cases evaluated by the policy capturing approach.
b
focuses more directly ██ ██████ ██ ███████ ██ █████████
The author doesn’t suggest that evaluating transcripts will help a researcher focus more “directly” on issues a plaintiff is concerned about. This approach does identify different kinds of variables, but we have no reason to think the variables identified by the transcript-reading approach focus more “directly” on issues than the variables identified by the policy capturing approach.
c
analyzes information that ██ ████ ██████ ███ █████████ ████████ ███████ ██████
We don’t have any basis to think that the approach in the last two paragraphs involves information that’s more recent. Although it involves evaluating transcripts during a “certain time period,” we have no reason to think this time period must be more recent than the time period of the opinions evaluated by policy capturing.
d
allows assessment of ███████ ██ █ ████ ████ ███ ███ ████████████ █████████ ██ █ ███████ ███████
Supported, because the approach discussed in the last two paragraphs involves reading transcripts. Transcripts are a record of everything said in court. The policy capturing approach, however, involves evaluating judges’ opinions, not the transcripts. The transcript-reading approach can assess things that aren’t specifically mentioned in the opinion, because we have no reason to think a legal opinion captures everything that’s in a transcript.
e
eliminates any distortion ███ ██ ████████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ██ ███ ██████████
We have no reason to think the approach discussed in the last two passages can eliminate bias from the researcher. A researcher who evaluates transcripts might still bring in their own biases to how they interpret the transcript.