• Research Professor
Joint Appointment
Howard J. Trienens Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University
Education
J.D., University of Chicago Law School
Ph.D., Northwestern University
M.A., Northwestern University
B.A., University of Michigan

Shari Seidman Diamond

  • Research Professor
ABF Researcher

Shari Seidman Diamond (she/her) is a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation and the Howard J. Trienens Professor of Law at Northwestern University Pritzker Law School. An attorney and social psychologist, she is one of the foremost empirical researchers on jury process and legal decision making, including the use of science by the courts. She has authored or coauthored more than 150 publications in law reviews and behavioral science journals, including the Reference Guide on Survey Research in the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (4th ed. in press) and The Multiple Dimensions of Trial by Jury: Studies of Jury Behavior (2016, in Spanish), and is completing a book on juries based on a field experiment in which cameras recorded real jury deliberations.

Diamond practiced law at Sidley Austin in the areas of Litigation and Intellectual Property. She has also taught at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and the University of Illinois Chicago; served as editor of the Law and Society Review and was president of the American Psychology-Law Society. She has served as an expert witness in American and Canadian courts on matters concerning juries, trademarks, and deceptive advertising, and her publications on juries and surveys have been cited by federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

Diamond received the 2010 Harry J. Kalven, Jr. Award from the Law and Society Association and the 1991 American Psychological Association award for Distinguished Contributions to Research in Public Policy. As a member of the ABA’s American Jury Project, she helped draft the Principles for Juries and Jury Trials adopted in 2005. She currently serves on the Seventh Circuit Committee on Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions and is a special advisor to the ABA Jury Commission. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012.

Research Focus

Legal decision-making, including conflicts between expertise and impartiality; discretion and control; equality and individuation; and science and law. Her research addresses how these conflicts influence jury and judicial decision-making, how they affect judgments about fairness, and how courts use and fail to make use of scientific evidence.