Essays on the Discretion of Prosecutors in the Legal Realm

This dissertation contains three chapters that describe the discretion of prosecutors in different ways. The first is a quantitative study that measures how many different interpretations a statute has and how that affects conviction rate. The second is an experiment that has mock prosecutors act out a courtroom situation to see if they select a law that is more just or one that gives them a higher economic pay-off. The third is a qualitative article that uses interviews with prosecutors and a survey to answer questions that are not addressed in the other two chapters. All of the chapters complement each other.