Turnpikes promised a solution to the problem of bad roads, but private management of highways was a startling innovation. Some people opposed the idea of turnpikes as exemplifying two bêtes noires of the post-Revolutionary period, the “private corporation” and “aristocracy.” Much of the controversy, however, was rooted in local disputes over legislative concessions to turnpike protesters. The legislature both expressed and responded to turnpike protest by writing laws favorable to local users and injurious to the financial viability of the companies. Partly in consequence, the turnpikes were unprofitable. Landowners, merchants, and farmers struggled to finance turnpikes, not so much in hopes of company dividends but in hopes of improved transportation, stimulated commerce, and higher land values. Many turnpike projects failed to be constructed, and those that were constructed carried on in a condition that reflected their precarious financial state.

This research examines the behavior of jurors as active information processors. Our experimental examination of the performance of the civil jury in response to a complex price-fixing case varies the information provided to jurors about the consequences of their damage award decisions (i.e., the treble damage rule) and the type of expert testimony (statistical models vs. concrete yardstick models). We find, consistent with a picture of the jury as active rather than passive, that jurors are more likely to follow judicial instructions when they are given explanations rather than bald admonitions. In addition, complex expert testimony neither overpowers the jurors nor is dismissed by them. The expert presenting a statistical model is viewed as having higher expertise but lower clarity; as a result the statistical expert and the expert presenting a more concrete model are not significantly different in their persuasiveness. Finally, in contrast to most research on the criminal jury, we find that deliberations do affect jury awards.

This article explores the conditions which lead to variation in the degree to which law affects private negotiations? It is an extension and modification of Mnookin and Kornhauser's (1979) formulation that negotiations occur in the shadow of the law. Drawing on prior research on disputes, I hypothesize that this effect depends on the way a claim is framed (which in turn is affected by the claimant's gender), on the mode of attorney involvement, and on claimant use of informational networks. I examine these hypotheses by an analysis of a small sample of recently divorced men and women who were interviewed about the negotiations that led to their custody and child-support arrangements.

Theory linking litigation onset, process, and outcome in jail reform lawsuits has been scarce. The author proposes a four-stage, comparative model: (1) conditions of surrounding legal and political environments, in concert with contextual factors (e.g., type of legal representation), set the stage for litigation in the trigger stage; (2) specific legal claims, defendants named, and litigation strategies shape litigation process at the liability stage; (3) the nature and degree of remedies crafted is shaped by complex interactions between litigants and judges at the remedy stage; and (4) judicial methods and litigant behavior shape negotiations, modifications, and compliance efforts in the postdecree stage. Using qualitative and quantitative research methods, the researcher examined hypotheses linking the four stages. All general-conditions lawsuits against California county jails between 1975 and 1989 (N=43) were coded and analyzed. Critical factors identified at each stage significantly influenced litigation incidence, process, and legal outcomes. The author discusses implications of a multimethod, comparative approach for studying court-ordered reform of public institutions.

Research into the effects of legal representation is rare because in many settings in which people might have lawyers, legal representation is either so common or so unusual that it cannot serve as a variable. Moreover, such research as exists is often poorly controlled or otherwise methodologically deficient. Our data set, derived from the case files of a public housing eviction board, allows us to overcome most of the difficulties that plague prior studies because it is relatively large and unusually rich in information about individual cases. We model the effects of various tenant and case characteristics on lawyer involvement as well as the effects of legal representation on case outcome. We find that lawyers tend to handle more difficult cases and that the likelihood that legal representation will aid a tenant depends on case type and changes over time. Our results, though likely to be context dependent, suggest how the effects of legal representation may be studied in other settings and the kinds of variables that may condition such effects.