By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: As our “tax day” approaches, most Americans are engaged in that annual rite of legal compliance. While there might be gray areas and even some cheating, by and large, we do what the law requires, even when it is inconvenient or painful. But just off our shores, there is a zone with […]
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: I am now involved in a rash of post-trial juror interviews. Currently, I have interviews in progress in three cases. As luck would have it, there is one win, one loss, and one draw (mistrial). While the calls have occupied a fair amount of my time lately, post-trial interviews more broadly
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: As the second penalty-phase trial for Jodi Arias ended last week with a hung jury and a mistrial, the word from the jury, 11 of 12 of them, was frustration. “We feel like we failed,” one said to ABC15, and the group issued an apology to the family of murder victim
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Language is the cognitive and social invention that made it possible for us to resolve conflicts with reason rather than force. Language begat law, and law in turn begat litigation. Lawyers work with words, and particularly those who are in the trial business understand very well that language isn’t neutral. Instead,
By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: Politics isn’t just a good way to start an argument, it is also a pretty reliable predictor of general leanings in litigation. Out of all of the demographic traits that we have looked at — factors like sex, race, education, and income — reported voting behavior is in most cases
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: The rooster can’t take credit for the sunrise. While the crowing tends to occur just before dawn, it does not cause the sun to come up. Thinking that “A” then “B” means that “A” caused “B” is a well-known logical mistake and fallacy. In Latin, it goes by the name
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: “The whole problem with the world,” according to an adage attributed to Bertrand Russell, “is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts.” Reading the comments sections in just about any online magazine, it is easy to see those confident extremists. There
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: T.o.M stands for “Theory of Mind,” and it is a very academic name for a very practical concept that might determine the difference between an effective team and an ineffective one. That is a difference that should matter to most trial lawyers. In criminal law and more modest civil cases,
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: You wouldn’t know the results of last Fall’s congressional midterm elections from watching the State of the Union Address this past Tuesday. It looked for all like a victory lap for President Barack Obama: The economy is rebounding, the unemployed and the uninsured are down, and America has ended the two
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By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm: If the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation methods following the September 11th attacks wasn’t depressing enough, the follow-up polling is sure to put an exclamation point on it: Americans, by a nearly two-to-one margin, support torture. Based on the belief that, despite the
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