McEwen and Eldridge on Judges, Juries, and Prejudicial Publicity: Lessons From Empirical Legal Scholarship

Rebecca McEwen, University of New South Wales, Faculty of Law, and John Eldridge, University of Sydney, Faculty of Law, have published Judges, Juries and Prejudicial Publicity: Lessons from Empirical Legal Scholarship at 41 Alternative Law Journal 110 (2016). Here is the abstract.

The criminal justice system has long held the view that judges are more capable than jurors of disregarding inadmissible prejudicial material. One consequence of this is the differential treatment of judges and jurors in respect of actual or potential exposure, via conventional or social media, to publicity which is prejudicial to a defendant. This article examines psycho-legal research findings which undermine the assumption upon which this differential treatment of judge and jury is based. It then identifies a number of questions which merit further attention in light of these findings.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.