Neil Vidmar
Russell M. Robinson II Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology
Neil Vidmar is Russell M. Robinson II Professor of Law. Professor Vidmar came to the study and teaching of law through a different path than his other law school colleagues. His mother discipline is social psychology. Since he does not hold a law degree, he likes to humorously describe himself as "practicing law professoring without a license for over 20 years." Vidmar received his BA from MacMurray College. During summers and winter breaks he helped fund his education by working in the Little Dog Coal Mine in his hometown of Gillespie, Illinois (and passed his certificate of competency as an Illinois coal miner in 1962). He earned his MA and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana in 1967 and immediately joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario, Canada , where he conducted research and taught in traditional areas of social psychology. He had never given much thought to law or how social psychology might be relevant to law, but in one of those many quirks of life he was asked to testify about the effects of group dynamics on jury prejudice in a Toledo, Ohio murder trial involving a young black man accused of killing a policeman. This led to an invitation to a conference on the death penalty at Columbia Law School shortly after Furman v. Georgia (1972) temporarily abolished the death penalty. His interest in law now fully aroused, he spent a year as a Russell Sage Resident at Yale Law School learning about law, followed by a year at Battelle Seattle Research Center. Returning to the University of Western Ontario he began to dedicate his research to law-related problems, including rights consciousness, dispute resolution, eyewitness identification -- and juries. He was one of many persons who successfully advocated for the abolition of the death penalty in Canada. Professor Vidmar was a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto in 1984 and 1986, and in 1987 was invited to visit Duke Law School. He joined the Duke Law faculty on a permanent basis in 1989. Vidmar also holds a cross-appointment with the Department of Psychology at Duke. In 1996 he was awarded the distinguished professorship in law.
Professor Vidmar's scholarly research involves the empirical study of law and spans a broad spectrum of topics in civil and criminal law. He is co-author of Vidmar and Hans, American Juries: The Verdict (2007). Other books include Hans and Vidmar, Judging the Jury (1986); Vidmar Medical Malpractice and the American Jury: Confronting the Myths About Jury Incompetence, Deep Pockets and Outrageous Damage Awards (1995), and Vidmar, World Jury Systems (2000, examining over 50 contemporary jury systems from a comparative law perspective.) In addition to juries, his research at Duke has included studies of medical malpractice litigation, punitive damages, dispute resolution and the social psychology of retribution and revenge. He has testified about jury prejudice and related issues in criminal and civil trials, including cases involving charges of terrorism (e.g. John Walker Lind, the so-called "American Taliban"). His expertise has also led to testimony and consulting about juries in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. He has drafted a number of amicus briefs for cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and testified or consulted about potential jury prejudice for criminal cases. At Duke he developed courses on negotiation and on social science evidence in law and occasionally teaches seminars on medical malpractice litigation and on the American jury.
Recent Scholarship
Books
Vidmar, N. and Hans, V. P.,AMERICAN JURIES: THE VERDICT , Prometheus ( Fall 2007).
Vidmar, N. (Ed.) WORLD JURY SYSTEMS, Oxford England: Oxford University Press (2000). [Translated into the Korean language with a foreword by Vidmar, 2007.]
Articles/Briefs
Vidmar, N. et al., Amicus Brief (regarding juries and punitive damages) submitted on behalf of Respondent in Philip Morris v. Williams, Supreme Court of the United States, No. 05-1256 ( September 2006); Williams v. Phillip Morris, 127 S.CT. 1057 (2007).
Vidmar, N. and MacKillop, K. "Judicial Hellholes," Medical Malpractice Claims, Verdicts and the "Doctor Exodus" in Illinois, 59 VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW 1309 (2006).
Vidmar, N. When All of Us Are Victims: Juror Prejudice and "Terrorist" Trials. 78 Chicago-Kent Law Review 1143 (2003).
Vidmar, N. and Diamond, D. Juries and Experts. 66 Brooklyn Law Review 1123-1182 (2001).
Vidmar, N. Retributive Justice: Its Social Context. In M. Ross and D.T. Miller (Eds.) THE JUSTICE MOTIVE IN EVERYDAY LIFE, 291 Cambridge University Press (2001).