MacCoun, R. J. (1993). Inside the black box: What empirical research tells us about decisionmaking by civil juries. In R. E. Litan (Ed.), Verdict: Assessing the civil jury system (pp. 137-180), Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.

This chapter discusses the potential contribution to the policymaking process of systematic empirical research on the behavior of civil juries. It provides a brief primer on methods of jury research; summarizes some of the major patterns in liability, compensatory, and punitive jury judgments; and attempts to explain how civil juries reach such judgments, drawing heavily on research on mock juries and describing the effects of extralegal variables on jury judgment.