What Judges Tell Juries about Negligence: A Review of Pattern Jury Instructions

The purpose of this Article is to help answer the question "how do judges convey the meaning of the negligence standard to juries?" The partial answer suggested in this Article comes from collecting, categorizing, and reporting on the different states' uniform or pattern jury instructions, a rich, largely untapped resource for legal scholars. The analysis of pattern negligence instructions suggests some plausible but tentative answers to other questions: how do juries understand the negligence instructions and how do they apply those instructions to the facts of individual cases? Finally, the Article discusses the relevance of those tentative answers to recurring problems in formulating an accurate descriptive theory of negligence liability.