Is the judge allowed to nullify laws? If a jury disagrees with a law, it's allowed to exercise a right known as jury nullification. However, what about civil cases (e.g., in a Superior Court in California) that are presided by a judge alone, with neither plaintiff nor defendant selecting a jury trial? Is the judge allowed to nullify laws? For example, I recall that in unlawful detainer cases in California that arise out of defects in the premises, if a jury gives a verdict that defects are substantiated, the landlord basically loses the whole case entirely (I think it has to do with defendants being judgement-proof and simply not paying the rent), even though the defects might be rather minor compared to the overall issues at stake. However, the jury is specifically prohibited from being instructed about such stakes! However, knowing what he knows, can the judge still be objective, or would he have to recuse himself out of fear of showing prejudice? Can he require the litigants to have a proper jury, including the associated fees, even though the case is supposedly eligible for a judge-only trial, too? How would it affect a potential appeal? Likewise, California statutes require that a 3-day notice preceding the UD has to specify the exact amount of rent (e.g., cannot include random fees). Is the judge allowed to show prejudice against mistakes in said amount?
The concept of "jury nullification" is not really applicable to civil litigation, whether it's a bench or a jury trial. The short answer is: generally in the United States, civil judges, and civil juries, have to follow the law. If the jury doesn't follow the law, the judge can entertain and grant a JNOV motion on the basis that no reasonable jury could have reached the verdict in question. If the judge doesn't follow the law, the aggrieved party can appeal the judgment as an abuse of discretion or on similar grounds. Jury nullification occurs when a criminal jury returns a verdict of "not guilty" although they feel the defendant was in fact guilty under the law. That is the only circumstance where no legal review can reverse the verdict. Civil "jury nullification" is not a particularly meaningful concept.
To what standard does the evidence need to be convincing so that the judge is satisfied that a jury could “reasonably convict” the defendant? The High Court expanded on the answer to this question in Mitchell, the decision you cited, at [32]: [In R v Kim [2010] NZCA 106] the Court of Appeal discussed the meaning of “insufficient to justify a trial” in the context of sufficiency of evidence: It is for the jury to determine whether the evidence is, or is not, sufficient to establish guilt. It is not for the Judge to predict what the jury will find. The test is whether the evidence, if accepted by the jury, is sufficient in law to prove the essential elements of the charge to the required standard. If so, the Judge should leave the case to the jury and not withdraw it on evidentiary grounds. Can circumstantial/cumulative evidence be sufficient? In 2015, Dr Chris Gallavin, Dean of Law at Canterbury University, wrote: Circumstantial evidence is the bedrock of inferential reasoning. As advocates, we are well aware that a case is not “weak” by virtue of it being based upon circumstantial evidence alone (a common misconception). Circumstantial evidence will often form the base of a strong case, again, in both the criminal and civil jurisdiction alike. Does this evidence meet the standard asked about above? Unfortunately this question is not allowed, because the rules state: Please don't ask questions seeking legal advice on a specific matter. These are off-topic for Law Stack Exchange. While users generally contribute answers in good faith, the answers are not legal advice, and contributors here are not your lawyer. The test of “insufficient to justify a trial” is somewhat Delphic because it calls for an evaluative judgment. That judgment can only be formed by a court with relevant jurisdiction.
None of the three factors you identify is correct. With respect to reason (1): The belief that a judge is likely to be landlord friendly on the merits, while a factor favoring a bench trial is actually a pretty minor one. Empirically, actual outcomes on the merits are far less different between jury trials and bench trials than you might expect. There aren't a lot of "moving parts" in a typical landlord-tenant case that afford the trier of fact much discretion. Usually there is evidence quantifying the amount of damage to the property in dollar terms and the amount of rent owed is usually just math. It isn't like a personal injury case where pain and suffering damages are highly subjective and even liability which hinges on a common sense assessment of what constitutes "reasonable case" is very vague. There may be some wiggle room in a landlord-tenant case to disagree on the credibility of witnesses and to differ in opinion regarding what constitutes "reasonable wear and tear", but the differences in litigation costs between a jury and bench trial will usually be greater in magnitude than the differences in outcomes on the merits between the two. Of course, in the rare case where the tenant is suing the landlord for a personal injury on the premises, the difference in outcome on the merits does matter quite a bit and a judge is much less likely to enter an extremely tenant favorable damages award than a jury is to do so. But, usually, lawyers for landlords aren't thinking about this scenario very much when they write a lease because it doesn't come up very often. With respect to reason (2): The landlord actually probably has a procedural advantage over the tenant in a jury trial where having a lawyer is more important than a bench trial, but this is pretty irrelevant, because landlords are overwhelmingly more likely to win than the tenant anyway. It isn't hard to prove that somebody didn't pay all of the rent that was owed, or that they damaged the premises. Landlords care more about litigation costs than they do about their odds of winning on the merits. With respect to reason (3): And, the judge interprets of rental agreement for the jury - the jury only decides the factual issues that are disputed with regard to the rental agreement as the judge explains what it means to them. So, confusion isn't a major concern either. Instead, the biggest factors are timing and litigation costs. A jury trial is longer, because it takes time to select a jury, to prepare jury instructions, to instruct the jury, and for the jury to deliberate. A landlord-tenant bench trial might be half a day or one day long, while a jury trial on the same matter might take two or three days. Selecting and charging a jury alone takes about half a day, and instructing a jury and having it deliberate takes another half-day at least. The longer duration of a jury trial means that it takes longer for a case before a jury to be scheduled than a bench trial, because there in any given time frame, there will be more slots available for short trials than long ones. A half day bench trial might be possible to schedule two or three months out, while a two or three day jury trial might not fit into a judge's calendar for five or six months. And, a lawsuit involving a jury trial is more expensive to conduct. It probably takes something on the order of 32 more hours of lawyer time to litigate a case that goes to a jury trial than a case set for a bench trial, which is on the order of $8,000 at $250 per hour. Generally, a tenant who is being evicted or owes rent is either judgment-proof, or at least hard to collect from, so the landlord has an interest in keeping litigation costs low. The out of pocket costs other than attorney's fees are also higher in a jury trial - there is typically a jury demand fee and a need to prepare a juror notebook for each juror. The need for better quality exhibits (e.g. exhibits may need to be blown up and put on an easel, or made into a powerpoint that can be see by all the jurors, rather than just photocopied and put in a single binder for a judge).
In any court, there will be situations where a judge has discretion to make some decision. The judge might have to decide "did X meet the burden of proof", and due to the situation two reasonable and competent judges could come to different conclusions. You couldn't blame either for the decision, even though they would make opposite decisions. On the other hand, a judge might make gross mistakes. The judge might decide "X met the burden of proof" when this is clearly a mistake. That's what the appellate court is interested in. An appellate court checks whether the judge made mistakes that a judge shouldn't make. So in this situation, the appellate court doesn't decide whether X met the burden of proof. The appellate judge decides "did the trial judge make a decision that a trial judge shouldn't have made". An appellate judge might think to himself or herself: "well, I would have decided differently, but this trial judge’s decision was one that a reasonable judge could have made", and if that is what he or she thinks, the original decision will stay intact.
A summary is here: see for example Section 35 of the Judiciary Act of 1789: 'in all the courts of the United States, the parties may plead and manage their own causes personally or by the assistance of counsel'. In the same vein, Adams v. United States ex rel. McCann, 317 U. S. 269 held that "an accused, in the exercise of a free and intelligent choice and with the considered approval of the court, may waive trial by jury, and so, likewise, may waive his constitutional right to the assistance of counsel". In Faretta v. California, 422 U.S. 806 it is held that this extends (via the 14th) to state courts. As to the expression "practice law", maybe the meaning of this expression is taken to be self-evident, though clearly it is not. Statutes that prohibit that act for non-lawyers generally specify things such as "for another person" or "holds himself out as entitled to practice law".
At the federal level, there is no real equivalent to what you're describing. A probable cause hearing evaluates the government's evidence in a similar way, but it doesn't ask whether a reasonable jury would convict. The closest I can think of is a Rule 29 motion, which does ask that question, but not until trial has already begun. You typically make the motion at the close of the government's case, and (if it was not successful) again at the close of your own, though I've heard tales of judges granting the motion at the end of the government's opening statement. The states all have their own rules, but they're generally pretty similar to the federal rules in this respect, as I understand it. I don't know of any state that allows the kind of motion you're talking about, in criminal cases, at least. In civil cases, I think everyone has Rule 12(b)(6) motions, which ask the court for a pretrial determination that there's no set of facts that could establish liability on the plaintiff's theory of the case.
No. It means the existence of reasonable doubt is in doubt... One cannot conclude the question of guilt in either direction, so one must try again to see if a different jury can answer the meta-question, to then answer the legal question of guilt. ... or is not being addressed If only one person is voting against the consensus, or as many as are allowed by the jurisdiction, they are overruled. That's the allowance made for bias that has somehow reached the jury despite the filtering done beforehand. If more people are voting against the majority so that consensus is not possible, it is potentially because someone has made up their mind on the question of guilt regardless of what (some significant part or the weight of) the evidence indicates, defeating the purpose of the trial and providing all the evidence. A person not accounting for all the evidence can't be said to have reasonable doubt of guilt, since the doubt may be excluded by the remaining evidence. Similarly, guilt beyond reasonable doubt cannot be supported by only partial evidence, as exculpatory evidence may be among the part not accounted for. ... or cannot be addressed by that jury at all. Finally, a jury split on the decision of how to weigh the evidence cannot claim either to have or to have dismissed reasonable doubt, because they cannot agree on what a reasonable doubt is, in the first place.
Your question slightly misrepresents what the article says: Yes, the judge denied the motion which led to the collapse of the case, he did not make a ruling on the substance of the case. The distinction is significant to my mind as the judge was using non-evidentiary knowledge (i.e. what he read in the paper) to make a decision on process; in this case a process that would have put a lot of people to a lot of inconvenience. It would not be proper for the judge to have used such knowledge to inform a judgement. It is also not clear from the article if the academic paper in question was actually introduced by the defendant as evidence. If that was the case then it is only right and proper for the judge to consider it. As to why a judge is allowed to read the news and a jury is not, I can offer several ideas: A judge must document their reasoning process in a judgement which is subject to review - if they were to make a decision based on matters not supported by the evidence then an appeals court could correct it. Alternatively, juries are specifically prohibited from revealing their reasoning process to anyone. Judges do their jobs for years, perhaps a whole career - to prohibit them from consuming media is a) unworkable and b) a serious impediment on their lifestyle. Juries are empaneled for weeks or months - such sacrifices are more reasonable. Judges are (supposedly) trained and impartial professionals who are more readily able to make the distinction between evidence and news. Newsworthy cases are relatively rare