Jury Procedures for Systems Engineering Decision Making

Tradeoff studies used in engineering choices are organized in a branching tree conceptual structure that curiously matches the conceptual schema employed by the law to find the best alternative in the natural world of human occurrences. Just as tradeoff study trees differentiate a level of attributes and a level of measures, common law legal practice has institutionalized the separation of the law and facts, which are separate determined by a trier-of-law and the trier-offact. Recognition of this similarity leads to the investigation of how the knowledge employed in each method can inform the other, both having evolved in rather insular research and practice fields. Broadly speaking, technical tradeoff studies can lend precision to this hybridization, while legal processes utilized in the jury trial system can provide wisdom as to the management of human perceptions and biases. This cross-disciplinary comparison helps engineering acknowledge and engage these human biases with a formulation and analysis of the components and workings of the law. While both decision processes span the breach between complementary qualitative and quantitative regions, they employ vastly different apparati that are best studied together.