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It seems strange to me that having prior technical knowledge in some field is seen as an assett in a judge, but a reason to disqualify a juror. Is it the case

It seems strange to me that having prior technical knowledge in some field is seen as an assett in a judge, but a reason to disqualify a juror. Is it the case that lawyers don't want anyone to understand the technical issues, but they only have the ability to get rid of potential jurors, not judges?

stock_toaster 7y ago
> Is it the case that lawyers don't want anyone to understand the technical issues, but they only have the ability to get rid of potential jurors, not judges? Pretty sure this accurately describes the situation.
kryogen1c 7y ago
Incentive structures for lawyers are based on winning. Its easier to convince someone ignorant that youre correct when you can supply (again, winning-incentivized) expert testimony that proves youre correct, instead of hoping the jury sees it your way.
- rhizome 7y ago
  Yeah, the "peers" part of a jury of your peers has been diluted many times over in the interests of guaranteeing a malleable audience. Winning vs. justice.
PaulWaldman 7y ago
Is the outcome any different if the lawyer has a technical background?
- ska 7y ago
  It may well change the lawyer's approach. And it's probably helpful in protecting against deposition bombing. But at the end of the day, they still have to present evidence and defend it's inclusion if needed, so their role doesn't change fundamentally.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I'm sure many times lawyers don't have expertise in the matter of the trial, but part of their job involves gaining expertise in the subject matter in order to properly pose a stance regarding the potential judgement. A lawyer without a firm grasp of the subject matter is just a bad lawyer... but we don't have that expectation of judges, the assumption is that the judge should push back on assumptions of general knowledge that the judge lacks and force the sides to present a logical argument that the judge can actually comprehend through their own knowledge of the subject matter... This is where I think things have broken down too often recently, lazy judges let lawyers get away with establishing unfounded statements that they accept without full comprehension - then the lawyers build arguments based off of those bad assumptions.
rayiner 7y ago
A jury trial involves a careful division between the jury's role and the role of the court, lawyers, and experts. The jury decides a factual question based on a carefully orchestrated presentation of evidence. The judge decides the content and manner of presentation of that evidence, to conform to legal requirements. The jury's job is simply to evaluate the evidence and render a decision. For example, say the defendant asserts that a patent is "obvious." "Obviousness" has a precise legal definition: it means that every element of a patent claim was disclosed in a combination of prior art references. Where multiple references must be combined to arrive at the invention, there usually must be a showing that one of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references in the necessary manner. The court will decide what elements are required by the patent claims and what references are prior art, and the experts will opine on what elements are disclosed in which prior art references and whether there is any motivation to combine them. The jury takes that information and decides the ultimate question of obviousness. That process absolutely requires the jury to "understand the technical issues." During trial, evidence about how the accused product works will be shown in slides right next to the patent claim language. Jurors will be repeatedly told that they must find that every element of the patent claim is practiced by the accused product. If jurors don't understand the technology well enough to map between the accused product and the patent claims, they are not going to return a verdict for the patent owner. (You will almost never see an appeal in a patent case where the patent required doing "X" and the accused product simply did not do "X." The fight is always about the scope of what it means to do "X.") But that understanding must be based only on the evidence presented. The risk with jurors who have domain knowledge in specific fields is that they will substitute their own knowledge and preconceptions for the evidence, and when that happens, you get a verdict that is not based on the evidence presented--which is curated to meet legal requirements--but based on an unknowable body of information in the juror's head. There is also no need for jurors to bring personal expertise to bear on a case. A jury of 12 ordinary people can understand surprisingly complex subject matter when they have Ivy-league PhDs explaining it to them, and do nothing but focus on the subject all day for a week or two at a time. What they may lack is domain knowledge. But if there is pertinent knowledge, it is the party's job to put that knowledge in front of the jury. The jury must simply be able to understand it once it has been presented. As to your last point--if the judge doesn't understand your technology, she will assume it is bullshit and find ways to throw out your case. (Most cases don't make it to a jury trial.) Parties go to great lengths to explain the technology to judges, for example, through lengthy tech tutorials and the like.
shaki-dora 7y ago
Imagine a vim v. emacs trial. Do you think a jury pool recruited from the tech community would be able to set aside any pre-existing opinions on the topic, and use just their general knowledge to fairly adjudicate the case that is actually presented in court? Yes, that requires a lot of "teaching" of the non-expert jury during the trial. But that's perfectly fine, because the purpose of a jury trial is not so much getting a verdict that is "better" in some objective sense than whatever an expert panel would come up with, but to create a process where the public at large feels represented and is able to follow the proceedings and trust the results.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Of course, and as a die-hard nano user I say "Hang both the blaggards!" (that is a good analogy though - and you hit the core point, the lawyers need to endow the judge or jurors with an expertise or understanding of any matter that is core to the judgement being decided)
tzs 7y ago
The plaintiff needs a unanimous decision by the jury to win, and has a limited amount of time to present arguments and to counter defense arguments. The Court actually keeps track of time used, and will cut them when they hit the limit. The more uniform your audience is, the better chance you have to craft an argument that will work with all of them. Suppose the trial involves some specialized field, and you have a jury with a wide range of knowledge about that field. Both plaintiff and defendant are going to include in their cases an explanation of the relevant field, pitched for the backgrounds of the jurors with the least prior knowledge. If the jury also has people who are experts in that field, there are at least three potential problems. 1. They are going to be bored during the part where you are explaining the field to the rest of the jury, and might let their minds wander, and might miss something important. 2. Your primer on their field necessarily simplifies things, and if you simplify in a different way than they would, it could prejudice them against your case. 3. The other jurors may turn to them for guidance on the evidence relating to that field. That's problematical for two reasons. 3a. If the evidence relating to the field is in an area where experts in that field disagree, the other jurors will get the position of the expert juror, and will probably give that more weight than the testimony of exports at trial who take a different position. In effect, the expert juror ends up also as a de facto expert witness in the trial--but an expert witness not subject to examination or cross examination. 3b. There is a danger that if the jury turns to the expert juror for help on the technical evidence, they will also tend to give more weight to that juror's opinion on the rest of evidence.
- jancsika 7y ago
  That unfortunately applies to other areas as well, like critical thinkers. It makes me curious-- suppose the judge asks a potential juror if there is any reason they cannot remain impartial. What happens if that potential juror responds yes, pointing out that the plantiff's lawyer had clearly been systematically dismissing the independent thinkers from the jury for the past four hours?
  - saghm 7y ago
    Mostly likely, that person won't be picked for jury then. That being said, when I served on a jury for a lawsuit earlier this year, we were informed about whether we were selected outside of the room where the remaining potential jurors were still sitting, meaning the people still in the room had no idea which of us were picked, since from their perspective, we would leave either way. Interestingly, there also wasn't a judge present for this selection, only the lawyers; apparently in my jurisdiction (New York City), judges are only present for the selection of jurors for criminal trials, not civil.

stock_toaster 7y ago

> Is it the case that lawyers don't want anyone to understand the technical issues, but they only have the ability to get rid of potential jurors, not judges? Pretty sure this accurately describes the situation.

kryogen1c 7y ago

Incentive structures for lawyers are based on winning. Its easier to convince someone ignorant that youre correct when you can supply (again, winning-incentivized) expert testimony that proves youre correct, instead of hoping the jury sees it your way.

rhizome 7y ago
Yeah, the "peers" part of a jury of your peers has been diluted many times over in the interests of guaranteeing a malleable audience. Winning vs. justice.

PaulWaldman 7y ago

Is the outcome any different if the lawyer has a technical background?

ska 7y ago
It may well change the lawyer's approach. And it's probably helpful in protecting against deposition bombing. But at the end of the day, they still have to present evidence and defend it's inclusion if needed, so their role doesn't change fundamentally.
munk-a 7y ago
I'm sure many times lawyers don't have expertise in the matter of the trial, but part of their job involves gaining expertise in the subject matter in order to properly pose a stance regarding the potential judgement. A lawyer without a firm grasp of the subject matter is just a bad lawyer... but we don't have that expectation of judges, the assumption is that the judge should push back on assumptions of general knowledge that the judge lacks and force the sides to present a logical argument that the judge can actually comprehend through their own knowledge of the subject matter... This is where I think things have broken down too often recently, lazy judges let lawyers get away with establishing unfounded statements that they accept without full comprehension - then the lawyers build arguments based off of those bad assumptions.

rayiner 7y ago

A jury trial involves a careful division between the jury's role and the role of the court, lawyers, and experts. The jury decides a factual question based on a carefully orchestrated presentation of evidence. The judge decides the content and manner of presentation of that evidence, to conform to legal requirements. The jury's job is simply to evaluate the evidence and render a decision. For example, say the defendant asserts that a patent is "obvious." "Obviousness" has a precise legal definition: it means that every element of a patent claim was disclosed in a combination of prior art references. Where multiple references must be combined to arrive at the invention, there usually must be a showing that one of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to combine the references in the necessary manner. The court will decide what elements are required by the patent claims and what references are prior art, and the experts will opine on what elements are disclosed in which prior art references and whether there is any motivation to combine them. The jury takes that information and decides the ultimate question of obviousness. That process absolutely requires the jury to "understand the technical issues." During trial, evidence about how the accused product works will be shown in slides right next to the patent claim language. Jurors will be repeatedly told that they must find that every element of the patent claim is practiced by the accused product. If jurors don't understand the technology well enough to map between the accused product and the patent claims, they are not going to return a verdict for the patent owner. (You will almost never see an appeal in a patent case where the patent required doing "X" and the accused product simply did not do "X." The fight is always about the scope of what it means to do "X.") But that understanding must be based only on the evidence presented. The risk with jurors who have domain knowledge in specific fields is that they will substitute their own knowledge and preconceptions for the evidence, and when that happens, you get a verdict that is not based on the evidence presented--which is curated to meet legal requirements--but based on an unknowable body of information in the juror's head. There is also no need for jurors to bring personal expertise to bear on a case. A jury of 12 ordinary people can understand surprisingly complex subject matter when they have Ivy-league PhDs explaining it to them, and do nothing but focus on the subject all day for a week or two at a time. What they may lack is domain knowledge. But if there is pertinent knowledge, it is the party's job to put that knowledge in front of the jury. The jury must simply be able to understand it once it has been presented. As to your last point--if the judge doesn't understand your technology, she will assume it is bullshit and find ways to throw out your case. (Most cases don't make it to a jury trial.) Parties go to great lengths to explain the technology to judges, for example, through lengthy tech tutorials and the like.

shaki-dora 7y ago

Imagine a vim v. emacs trial. Do you think a jury pool recruited from the tech community would be able to set aside any pre-existing opinions on the topic, and use just their general knowledge to fairly adjudicate the case that is actually presented in court? Yes, that requires a lot of "teaching" of the non-expert jury during the trial. But that's perfectly fine, because the purpose of a jury trial is not so much getting a verdict that is "better" in some objective sense than whatever an expert panel would come up with, but to create a process where the public at large feels represented and is able to follow the proceedings and trust the results.

munk-a 7y ago
Of course, and as a die-hard nano user I say "Hang both the blaggards!" (that is a good analogy though - and you hit the core point, the lawyers need to endow the judge or jurors with an expertise or understanding of any matter that is core to the judgement being decided)

tzs 7y ago

The plaintiff needs a unanimous decision by the jury to win, and has a limited amount of time to present arguments and to counter defense arguments. The Court actually keeps track of time used, and will cut them when they hit the limit. The more uniform your audience is, the better chance you have to craft an argument that will work with all of them. Suppose the trial involves some specialized field, and you have a jury with a wide range of knowledge about that field. Both plaintiff and defendant are going to include in their cases an explanation of the relevant field, pitched for the backgrounds of the jurors with the least prior knowledge. If the jury also has people who are experts in that field, there are at least three potential problems. 1. They are going to be bored during the part where you are explaining the field to the rest of the jury, and might let their minds wander, and might miss something important. 2. Your primer on their field necessarily simplifies things, and if you simplify in a different way than they would, it could prejudice them against your case. 3. The other jurors may turn to them for guidance on the evidence relating to that field. That's problematical for two reasons. 3a. If the evidence relating to the field is in an area where experts in that field disagree, the other jurors will get the position of the expert juror, and will probably give that more weight than the testimony of exports at trial who take a different position. In effect, the expert juror ends up also as a de facto expert witness in the trial--but an expert witness not subject to examination or cross examination. 3b. There is a danger that if the jury turns to the expert juror for help on the technical evidence, they will also tend to give more weight to that juror's opinion on the rest of evidence.

jancsika 7y ago
That unfortunately applies to other areas as well, like critical thinkers. It makes me curious-- suppose the judge asks a potential juror if there is any reason they cannot remain impartial. What happens if that potential juror responds yes, pointing out that the plantiff's lawyer had clearly been systematically dismissing the independent thinkers from the jury for the past four hours?
- saghm 7y ago
  Mostly likely, that person won't be picked for jury then. That being said, when I served on a jury for a lawsuit earlier this year, we were informed about whether we were selected outside of the room where the remaining potential jurors were still sitting, meaning the people still in the room had no idea which of us were picked, since from their perspective, we would leave either way. Interestingly, there also wasn't a judge present for this selection, only the lawyers; apparently in my jurisdiction (New York City), judges are only present for the selection of jurors for criminal trials, not civil.