Argued October 15, 1986.Decided April 22, 1987.

Rehearing Denied June 8, 1987.

BARNES, J. delivered the opinion of the Court. Powell, J. joined in all but Part II. Rehnquist J. filed a dissenting opinion, in which O’Connor, Scalia, and White joined.

Defendant McCleskey filed a writ of habeas corpus in the Northern District of Georgia challenging a 1979 murder conviction and death sentence imposed in Fulton County, Georgia. The petition, which the District Court and the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals denied, questions whether statistical evidence from research studies that strongly suggest racial considerations factor into capital sentencing jury deliberations, provides a basis to determine the petitioner’s sentence was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment or Fourteenth Amendment. We now reverse those decisions based on empirical data strongly corroborating a significant risk exists that McCleskey’s sentence involved unconstitutional race discrimination in violation of both the Eighth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Very little empirical research has been conducted in relation to China’s BIT law and practice. This chapter makes a novel attempt to comprehend China’s BIT-making by applying an empirical (or quantitative) approach. Existing literature has tried to rationalize Chinese BITs’ generational evolution by attributing this to China’s policy shift, transitioning from using BITs to attract foreign investment to using BITs to protect its outbound investment. Because of this policy shift, Chinese BITs are being reframed or remodeled, moving from a conservative and protectionist approach with the stress on sovereignty in regulating foreign investment to a liberal approach with more focus on foreign investors’ protection. Although the Chinese government has never made it clear to the outside world why and how its BITs have changed, the general wisdom attributes this change to the government’s self-determined policy move. Through its empirical study, the chapter looks for correlation between Chinese BITs and a variety of factors shaping a host state’s BIT policy. The finding seems to suggest that China’s BIT policy change is due to some outside pressures as well as certain endogenous factors.