Contextualizing the "Black Box".

Scholars sometimes refer to the civil jury decision-making process as a "black box," because researchers cannot view juries' interior workings. However, state institutions structure the environment in which disputes arise and determine the rules courts apply, while environmental factors condition courts' responses to claims. This article utilizes an original data set of civil jury verdicts in five states to examine the influence of cross-state institutional variation and trial location on courts' dispute resolution and resource allocation functions. The results indicate that institutions and trial location significantly influence patterns of winners and losers, while case-specific factors predict the amount awarded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]