Preponderance of the Evidence versus Intime Conviction: A Behavioural Perspective on a Conflict Between American and Continental European Law

Best Evidence: The Role of Information in Domestic Judicial Enforcement of International Human Rights Agreements

“…My research design focuses on the effects of ICCPR ratification on state human rights practices+ Adopted in 1966 and entered into force in 1976, the ICCPR has 67+ See Wright 2009;Engel 2009;and Taruffo 2003+ 68+ In a few countries, the same underlying offense can be pursued as both a criminal and civil matter+ since been ratified by 167 countries~as of 2012!+ Unlike many multilateral human rights treaties that have been adopted more recently, the ICCPR covers a broad range of rights+ These include the key personal integrity rights discussed here+ Article 6 protects individuals' right to life and thus prohibits extrajudicial killings by governments+ Likewise, article 7 prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment+ Article 9 provides that individuals may not be arbitrarily arrested or detained+ This, together with additional prohibitions on the infringement of political rights, is often deemed a prohibition on political imprisonment and other detentions in violation of due process+ The ICCPR does not explicitly address forced disappearances, most likely because the term was not used in common parlance until the abuses of the South American regimes of the 1970s became well known+ Yet the elements of a forced disappearance, most importantly arbitrary arrest and summary execution, are explicitly prohibited by the ICCPR+ The ICCPR also prohibits governments from infringing on a broad set of additional civil and political rights+ Among these are freedoms of speech and expressioñ article 19!, assembly and association~articles 21 and 22!, and the practice of religion~articles 18!+ Importantly, article 2 requires members to adopt domestic laws, including legislation as necessary, to "give effect to the rights" enumerated in the treaty+ 69 From a research design perspective, focusing on the ICCPR has several advantages in this context+ First, this allows me to test the effects of ratification of a single treaty on different dimensions of government human rights practices+ This has the advantage of allowing for a direct comparison of treaty commitment effects while minimizing the extent to which findings may be caused by differences in treaty design+ In addition, relying on a single treaty allows me to use the same set of units of observation to test all of my hypotheses+ As a result, the only difference between the various regression models reported below is the dependent variable, which allows for clean comparisons between the results+ Finally, empirical findings regarding the effects of ICCPR membership have produced mixed results, as I will discuss+ The extent to which existing work allows for causal inference is debatable, and much of the work has used pooled measures of either personal integrity rights and0or other civil rights+ The use of methods designed for causal inference regarding the effects of ICCPR ratification on specific measures of human rights practices may shed light on an important empirical puzzle+…”

The impact of fine size and uncertainty on punishment and deterrence: Theory and evidence from the laboratory

“…In the US, decisions on civil claims are based on preponderance of evidence, while the proof beyond reasonable doubtprinciple applied in criminal cases carries to a large degree over to civil claims in Europe (see Clermont andSherwin, 2002 andTaruffo, 2003 for a dispute on these principles). Engel (2009) points out that the controversy about the appropriate allocation of the burden of proof needs to be related to the different goals of judicial procedures, and to the underlying assumptions on how legal decision makers actually reach their verdicts.…”

Empirical Methods for the Law

“…In criminal procedure, almost all legal orders of the world adopt a standard of proof akin to the US standard "beyond a reasonable doubt". It implies the normative decision that convicting an innocent defendant is much worse than acquitting guilty defendants (for background see Engel 2009). 1 Yet in other contexts, the law has good reason to be more concerned about false negatives.…”