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Full-Text Articles in Law
Taking Myths Seriously: An Essay For Lawyers, Donald C. Langevoort
Taking Myths Seriously: An Essay For Lawyers, Donald C. Langevoort
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The specific idea I want to explore has to do with the motivational power of myths and illusions on a personal level. To take a mundane example, people are often told to "believe in themselves." The underlying idea seems to be that high self confidence is an important motivator, especially in competitive settings like school, sports, business and the professions. This is not the idle talk of family and friends; millions of dollars are spent each year by people and their employers on motivational books and programs that offer endless variations on this simple theme in an effort to bolster …
Foreword: Law, Psychology, And The Emotions, Heidi Li Feldman
Foreword: Law, Psychology, And The Emotions, Heidi Li Feldman
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Given that law is made by and for people, the relatively little attention lawyers, judges, and legal scholars have paid to human psychology is surprising. Too often, legal writers have either presupposed or borrowed impoverished conceptions of human nature, erecting legal theories for people presumptively possessed of the requisite nature, regardless of the psychology of the actual persons who make and live under the law. Even when they do attend to human nature, legal scholars tend to ignore the centrality of emotions, dispositions, fantasies, and wishes to human psychology. The articles in this Symposium are united by their authors' resistance …