By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: How do humans assess large sets of evidence? We start by simplifying and internally summarizing. One of the main ways we do that is to boil the information down to a limited number categories, usually two. For example, let’s say you’re trying to assess the health effects of a glass […]
Understand the Binary Bias Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Experts have a tough job translating sometimes technical detail to lay audiences and working closely with a party to the litigation while still maintaining the role of “teacher” rather than “advocate.” Some excellent and wide-ranging advice on how to thread that needle comes in the form of a couple of
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: A newly-published study about the effects of voir dire in capital cases suggests that social scientists and the courts may need to reconsider a long-held tenet. For at least the past 35 years, the belief has been that jurors exposed to the process of jury selection in capital cases, known as
Voir Dire: Account for Both Presumptions and Expectations Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: It is almost election time again. But the normally low-turnout midterm may not be in the cards this time around, owing to the outrage on both sides of the political spectrum. And some believe that it’s a shame that we have these levels of moral outrage: It diminishes our civility
Consider the Upside of Outrage Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: I think it is now possible to divide the #MeToo movement, so far, into two phases: Pre-Kavanaugh and Post-Kavanaugh. The cultural phenomenon of women stepping up to hold sexual harassers and abusers accountable has hit a roadblock. If the charges against Harvey Weinstein was the movement’s Battle of Austerlitz, then
React to the #MeToo and #HimToo Scripts Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: It is one of those factors of advocacy that is understood at a basic level, but not practiced at an effective level: Structure. Whenever you are verbally presenting — opening statement, closing argument, oral argument, CLE’s — organize your content into clear and discrete main points. Litigators know that, of
Make It Chunky: Eight Best Practices for a Structure that Sticks Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Jurors and judges sometimes need to understand testimony regarding probability. For a criminal jury, maybe that probability relates to the chances of a false-positive on DNA identification. In a products case, maybe it concerns a failure rate. In an employment discrimination class action, it may relate to differing hiring percentages. And
Explaining Probability? Use Frequencies Rather Than Percentages Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court just heard oral arguments seeking to overturn a drug-possession conviction in the case of Commonwealth v. Quinton Williams. The Defense had appealed based on the judge’s dismissal of one potential juror who shared a belief that the criminal justice system is unfair towards young black men. The juror reported
Distinguish Between Bias and Belief Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: “Should I Stay, or Should I Go,” ask The Clash. There’s a basic tendency to see our decisions in a binary fashion: There are two choices, and choosing one excludes the other. But for those seeking to understand and improve human decision-making, there are reasons to believe that this is not
Consider More Paths Read More »
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: During Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony last Thursday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, at one point I imagined that millions of Americans were doing a double take at her use of the word “hippocampus.” When the witness was asked, as part of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, what she remembers
Understand the Memory-Encoding Role of Heightened States Read More »