Amin Ebrahimi Afrouzi (UCLA School of Law - UCLA School of Law; Yale Law School) has posted Leveling Down Legal Resources: Why Epistemic Arguments Fail (Legal Theory, Forthcoming). Here is the abstract:
The rich evade conviction more often in criminal trials than the poor. They also win more often in civil cases against the poor. Given that money buys better lawyers and better lawyers are instrumental to winning in adversarial trials, the rich have a structural advantage in laissez faire trial systems. Such inequality is concerning. In a landmark paper, Alan Wertheimer argues that we should level down legal resources in civil cases, on the basis that doing so increases the adversarial system's accuracy, that is, it's chance of reaching correct decisions. In a more recent paper and along similar lines, Shai Agmon also advocates that given some constraints of adequacy, legal resources should be leveled down in both civil and criminal cases. This paper aims to show that such arguments fail, because leveling down legal resources could decrease a trial system's accuracy, making it worse by Wertheimer's or Agmon's own lights.
Highly recommended.
