Law Commons^™

Neuropsychological Malingering Determination: The Illusion Of Scientific Lie Detection, Chunlin Leonhard, Christoph Leonhard

Georgia Law Review

Humans believe that other humans lie, especially when stakes are high. Stakes can be very high in a courtroom, from substantial amounts of monetary damages in civil litigation to liberty or life in criminal cases. One of the most frequently disputed issues in U.S. courts is whether litigants are malingering when they allege physical or mental conditions for which they are seeking damages or which would allow them to avoid criminal punishment. Understandably, creating a scientific method to detect lies is very appealing to all persons engaged in lie detection. Neuropsychologists claim that they can use neuropsychological assessment tests (Malingering …

An Introduction To Personal Growth Bets: Using Contract Law To Lose Weight And Quit Smoking, Max Raskin, Jack Millman

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

Self-improvement is hard. Whether losing weight or quitting smoking, individuals have a difficult time honoring their commitments, especially if the only person they are disappointing is themselves. In this Article, we introduce a new legal mechanism for incentivizing personal growth. We describe this mechanism as a personal growth contract, which allows an individual to make an enforceable agreement with either a counterparty or himself with the aim of self-improvement. We propose the use of smart contracts to help execute unilateral personal growth contracts. Our conclusion is that personal growth contracts should be presumptively legal, provided they do not violate some …

Gender And Deception: Moral Perceptions And Legal Responses, Gregory Klass, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Articles

Decades of social science research has shown that the identity of the parties in a legal action can affect case outcomes. Parties’ race, gender, class, and age all affect decisions of prosecutors, judges, juries, and other actors in a criminal prosecution or civil litigation. Less studied has been how identity might affect other forms of legal regulation. This Essay begins to explore perceptions of deceptive behavior—i.e., how wrongful it is, and the extent to which it should be regulated or punished—and the relationship of those perceptions to the gender of the actors. We hypothesize that ordinary people tend to perceive …

Juror's Perceptions Of Evidence-Based Suspicion, Nicholas Welter

Student Theses

Eyewitness misidentification is a leading cause of wrongful conviction. Although the prior probability of guilt (i.e., pre-identification evidence strength) is the most important factor for predicting a defendant’s actual guilt status and the accuracy of any subsequent eyewitness identification, no study has examined whether it affects juror decisions. This oversight is problematic because when officers place suspects in lineups when there is little evidence connecting them to the crime, it falls on jurors to examine the probative value of identification evidence. Participants (N = 357) watched a mock trial depicting an armed robbery that varied pre-identification evidence (strong vs. …

The Downfall Of Daniel Fitzpatrick: A Creative Short Story, Renee Horsley

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

Daniel grew up with humble beginnings in Starlight, Nebraska. His loving parents provided him and his four other siblings with as much as they could. Victoria grew up wealthy in a small town in Georgia but by fifth grade, Victoria would move to Starlight due to her father’s business proposition. Soon Daniel and Victoria’s worlds collided setting the way for the most epic and yet tragic love story to ever hit Starlight Nebraska. A creative short story that intertwines the disciplines of criminal justice, intergroup dialogue, psychology, and the law.

Gender And Deception: Moral Perceptions And Legal Responses, Gregory Klass, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Decades of social science research has shown that the identity of the parties in a legal action can affect case outcomes. Parties’ race, gender, class, and age all affect decisions of prosecutors, judges, juries, and other actors in a criminal prosecution or civil litigation. Less studied has been how identity might affect other forms of legal regulation. This Essay begins to explore perceptions of deceptive behavior—i.e., how wrongful it is, and the extent to which it should be regulated or punished—and the relationship of those perceptions to the gender of the actors. We hypothesize that ordinary people tend to perceive …

The Psychology Of Science Denialism And Lessons For Public Health Authorities, Brenna Moreno, Molly J. Walker Wilson

All Faculty Scholarship

As it wreaked tragedy on the world, the outbreak of COVID-19 helped expose a pandemic of a different kind, one steeped in distrust and contrarianism. This movement, termed science denialism, has been lurking and undermining public health efforts for decades. Specifically, it is “the employment of rhetorical arguments to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists.” Unlike skepticism, which is “doubt as to the truth of something” and works to progress both science and society, denialism is characterized by individuals’ …

Judging Better Together: Understanding The Psychology Of Group Decision-Making On Panel Courts And Tribunals, Brian M. Barry Dr

Articles

While the psychological phenomena that affect group decisionmaking have been thoroughly investigated for decades, how these phenomena apply to decision-making by judges on panel courts is under-examined. This article examines the main psychological phenomena of group decision-making, both positive and negative, and considers their implications for panel courts and other groups of professional legal decision-makers such as adjudicators serving on tribunals. This article argues that experimental studies on judges and adjudicators testing the effects of these phenomena would improve understanding of legal decision-making by these groups and could help to devise ways to improve their decision-making processes to reach higher …

College Athletes As Defendants In Rape Trials: The Impact On Legal Decision-Making, Sophia Salyers

Lewis Honors College Thesis Collection

The issue of rape continues to be of concern in the United States. Rape is defined as any unwanted or forcible penetration without consent (United States Department of Justice, 2017). More specifically, rape can include sexual violence tactics such as force, threats, manipulation, or coercion (National Sexual Violence Resource Center, 2022). The magnitude of the issue of rape has been demonstrated, with adult rape data showing that on average, 319,950 people over the age of 12 were raped or sexually assaulted in the United States annually in 2020 (Morgan, 2021). Furthermore, every sixty-eight seconds an American is raped (Morgan). Finally, …

Character Evidence As A Conduit For Implicit Bias, Hillel J. Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The Federal Rules of Evidence purport to prohibit character evidence, or evidence regarding a defendant’s past bad acts or propensities offered to suggest that the defendant acted in accordance with a certain character trait on the occasion in question. However, courts regularly admit character evidence through an expanding set of legislative and judicial exceptions that have all but swallowed the rule. In the usual narrative, character evidence is problematic because jurors place excessive weight on it or punish the defendant for past behavior. Lawmakers rely on this narrative when they create exceptions. However, this account arguably misses a highly troublesome …

The Child Vanishes: Justice Scalia’S Approach To The Role Of Psychology In Determining Children’S Rights And Responsibilities, Aviva Orenstein

FIU Law Review

Justice Scalia’s attitudes about children and psychology reveal fascinating patterns in his thinking about the rights, responsibilities, needs, and experiences, of children. With his famous wit and acerbic style fully on display, Justice Scalia’s opinions across various legal doctrines demonstrated hostility to the science of psychology and its practitioners, as well as a callous attitude towards children’s trauma. Contemptuous of a best- interests analysis and the professionals who counsel about those interests, Justice Scalia instead emphasized parental and state power over children and tended to advocate for child protection only when it limited children’s agency and freedom. This article demonstrates …

Shifting The Male Gaze Of Evidence, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

In this article I target the altar at which many of us worship—the pursuit of rationality. For evidence purposes, rationality is defined as decisions that are reasonable, objective, inductive, and free from the bias of emotion. This view of rationality is deeply embedded in evidence scholarship and practice. It is also reflected in evidence rules like FRE 403, which treat emotional testimony as unfairly prejudicial simply because it is emotional. The anti-emotion view of rationality reflects the thinking of Western philosophical giants. Plato, Hobbes, Descartes, and Bacon all thought that men should strive for rationality by suppressing their emotions, because …

Minding Accidents, Teneille R. Brown

University of Colorado Law Review

Tort doctrine states that breach is all about conduct. Unlike in the criminal law context, where jurors must engage in amateur mindreading to evaluate mens rea, jurors are told that they can assess civil negligence by looking only at the defendant’s external behavior. But this is false. Here I explain why, by incorporating the psychology of foresight. Foreseeability is at the heart of negligence—appearing as the primary test for duty, breach, and proximate cause. And yet, it has been called a “vexing morass” and a “malleable standard” because it is so poorly understood. This Article refines and advances the construct …

The Child Vanishes: Justice Scalia's Approach To The Role Of Psychology In Determining Children's Rights And Responsibilities, Aviva Orenstein

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This Article explores how Justice Antonin Scalia’s hostility to psychology, antipathy to granting children autonomous rights, and dismissiveness of children’s interior lives both affected his jurisprudence and was a natural outgrowth of it. Justice Scalia expressed a skeptical, one might even say hostile, attitude towards psychology and its practitioners. Justice Scalia’s cynicism about the discipline and the therapists who practice it is particularly interesting regarding legal and policy arguments concerning children. His love of tradition and his rigid and unempathetic approach to children clash with modern notions of child psychology. Justice Scalia’s attitude towards psychology helps to explain his jurisprudence, …

The Effect Of Learning Strategy For Understanding In The Collection Of Fifth Grade Students In Philosophy, Psychology And The Development Of Their Logical Intelligence, Ahmed B. Ahmed

Journal of STEPS for Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study aims to identify the impact of the learning strategy for understanding on the achievement of fifth grade literary students in the subject of philosophy and psychology and the development of their logical intelligence. As there is no statistically significant difference at the level of significance between the average scores of the students of the experimental group that studied according to the learning for understanding strategy, and the average scores of the control group that studied in the usual way in the achievement test in philosophy and psychology. There is no difference. It is statistically significant between the …

The Effect Of The Julai Model On Developing Convergent Thinking Among Fifth-Grade Literary Students In The Subject Of Philosophy And Psychology, Mahmoud Khalil Hamad

Journal of STEPS for Humanities and Social Sciences

The research aims to identify the effect of the Julai model in developing convergent thinking among fifth-grade literary students in the subject of philosophy and psychology. In order to achieve the goal of the research, the researcher formulated the following hypotheses:

1-There is no statistically significant difference at the significance level (0.05) between the average scores of the experimental group students who study philosophy and psychology according to the Julai model and the average scores of the control group students who study the same subject in the usual way in the post test of convergent thinking.

2-There is no statistically …

Note: Structured Psychometrics In Biglaw Talent Acquisition: Ai-Driven Quantitative Fit, Joseph J. Kim

Notre Dame Journal on Emerging Technologies

This Note combines a number of perspectives and disciplines to proffer a unique suggestion toward recognizing better talent and acquiring a new intraindustry competitive edge.

The Effect Of Teaching By The Method Of Embedding And Its Overlap With The Methods Of Random And Sequential Exercise In Learning Some Basic Skills, The Study Foot, Taher Yahya Ibrahim, Haitham Muhammed Kazem, Mostafa Ahmed Abdel Amir, Ahmed Abdel Amir Hamza

Journal of STEPS for Humanities and Social Sciences

The importance of the research is summarized in the selection of effective teaching methods in education. This study aimed at discipline, control accuracy, and an increase in repetition attempts. This Paying attention to individual differences and the participation of the learner in making educational behavioral decisions. Diversity in the contents of education in line with the learners' abilities،ages،and stages of study. The problem of the research lies in that the educational vocabulary was prepared in advance for all learners without exception and without taking into account the different levels of their initial performance efficiency. This means not paying attention to …

The Effectiveness Of Recreational Activities In The Psychological Happiness Of Students, *Muhammad Saad Mardan, Haitham Muhammed Kazem, Hussain Saleh Najm, Amal Sobeih Salman

Journal of STEPS for Humanities and Social Sciences

Recreational activities are one of the most significant items that tend to the soul. That individual’s offer with longing and enthusiasm. It is one of the most successful forms to add fun, pleasure, and psychological happiness. Because it achieves educational and pedagogical objectives. In addition to upgrading the functional organs of the body for the various parts of the body. As the main goal of recreation is to help the individuals involved in it so that they obtain a peak of happiness and contentment. In addition, taking advantage of their spare time so that they benefit from it. Several benefits, …

The Effectiveness Of Recreational Activities In The Psychological Happiness Of Students, Muhammad Saad Mardan, Haitham Muhammed Kazem, Hussain Saleh Najm, Amal Sobeih Salman

Journal of STEPS for Humanities and Social Sciences

Recreational activities are one of the most significant items that tend to the soul. That individual’s offer with longing and enthusiasm. It is one of the most successful forms to add fun, pleasure, and psychological happiness. Because it achieves educational and pedagogical objectives. In addition to upgrading the functional organs of the body for the various parts of the body. As the main goal of recreation is to help the individuals involved in it so that they obtain a peak of happiness and contentment. In addition, taking advantage of their spare time so that they benefit from it. Several benefits, …

Reported Experiences With Plea Bargaining: A Theoretical Analysis Of The Legal Standard, Krystia Reed, Allison Franz, Vincent Calderon, Alisha Meschkow, Valerie F. Reyna

West Virginia Law Review

Although the majority of criminal cases in the United States are settled with plea bargains, very little empirical evidence exists to explain how defendants make life-altering plea bargain decisions. This Article first discusses the psychologicalfactors involved in plea bargaining decisions. Next, this Article empirically examines the factors involved in plea decisions of real-life defendants within the legal and psychological contexts. Finally, this Article highlights the psychological issues that need to be further examined in pleabargaining literature.

Combating Recidivism, Shaylin Daley

Senior Honors Projects

SHAYLIN DALEY (Psychology) Combating Recidivism Sponsor: Lisa Holley (Political Science) Many people believe that criminals cannot be helped. It is evident that at least some of society shuns people who break laws and have negative views about the amount of money spent on detaining inmates. Thousands of individuals are released from United States prisons a day. Many of these individuals have no plan in place for their return home and are sent into the streets with nothing except for a jail ID. Most of these people will end up returning to prison. A good sum of these people face problems …

Interconstituted Legal Agents, Christian Turner

Scholarly Works

Legal theory and doctrine depend on underlying assumptions about human nature and sociality. Perhaps the most common and basic assumption is that we are separate persons who communicate imperfectly with one another. While this separation thesis has been questioned, it still dominates legal theory. However, I show that understanding separation and connection as alternative perspectives, rather than as ontologically true or false, reveals that legal conflict often arises when these perspectives give rise to clashing intuitions concerning the meaning of community and what constitutes goals and harms. This Article organizes perspectives on social relationships in increasing order of intersubjectivity: isolation, …

Listening To Our Students: Fostering Resilience And Engagement To Promote Culture Change In Legal Education, Ann N. Sinsheimer, Omid Fotuhi

Articles

In this Article, we describe a dynamic program of research at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law that uses mindset to promote resilience and engagement in law students. For the last three years, we have used tailored, well-timed, psychological interventions to help students bring adaptive mindsets to the challenges they face in law school. The act of listening to our students has been the first step in designing interventions to improve their experience, and it has become a kind of intervention in itself. Through this work, we have learned that simply asking our law students about their experiences and …

Critical Review Of The Use Of The Rorschach In European Courts, Igor Areh, Fanny Verkampt, Alfred Allan

Research outputs 2014 to 2021

In relation to the admissibility of evidence obtained using projective personality tests arose in F v. Bevándorlási és Állampolgársági Hivatam (2018). The Court of Justice of the European Union has held that an expert’s report can only be accepted if it is based on the international scientific community’s standards, but has refrained from stipulating what these standards are. It appears timely for European psychologists to decide what standards should be applied to determine whether or not a test is appropriate for psycholegal use. We propose standards and then apply them to the Rorschach because it was used in this case …

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We call for psychologists to expand their thinking on fair and just public safety by engaging with the “Abolition Democracy” framework that Du Bois (1935) articulated as the need to dissolve slavery while simultaneously taking affirmative steps to rid its toxic consequences from the body politic. Because the legacies of slavery continue to produce disparities in public safety in the U.S, both harming Black people and the institutions that could keep them safe, psychologists must take seriously questions of history and structure in addition to immediate situations. In the present article, we consider the state of knowledge regarding psychological processes …

Covid-19 And Its Impact(S) On Innovation, Clark Asay, Stephanie Plamondon Bair

Utah Law Review

In previous work, we explored how certain characteristics of adversity are often more conducive to innovation than others. In this Article, prepared as part of the Lee E. Teitelbaum Utah Law Review Symposium—The Law & Ethics of Medical Research, we review some of that work and apply it specifically to the COVID-19 context. We conclude by assessing certain policy implications in light of how the COVID-19 pandemic has both spurred and hindered innovation.

Minding Accidents, Teneille R. Brown

Utah Law Faculty Scholarship

Tort doctrine states that breach is all about conduct. Unlike in the criminal law, where jurors must engage in an amateur form of mindreading to evaluate mens rea, jurors are told that they can assess civil negligence by looking only at how the defendant behaved. But this is false. Foreseeability is at the heart of negligence—appearing as the primary tests for duty, breach, and proximate cause. And yet, we cannot ask whether a defendant should have foreseen a risk without interrogating what he subjectively knew, remembered, perceived, or realized at the time. In fact, the focus on actions in negligence …

Reducing Prejudice Through Law: Evidence From Experimental Psychology, Roseanna Sommers, Sara Burke

Law & Economics Working Papers

Can antidiscrimination law effect changes in public attitudes toward minority groups? Could learning, for instance, that employment discrimination against people with clinical depression is illegal cause members of the public to be more accepting toward people with mental health conditions? In this Article, we report the results of a series of experiments that test the effect of inducing the belief that discrimination against a given group is legal (vs. illegal) on interpersonal attitudes toward members of that group. We find that learning that discrimination is unlawful does not simply lead people to believe that an employer is more likely to …

Before And After Hinckley: Legal Insanity In The United States, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter first considers the direction of the affirmative defense of legal insanity in the United States before John Hinckley was acquitted by reason of insanity in 1982 for attempting to assassinate President Reagan and others and the immediate aftermath of that acquittal. Since the middle of the 20^th Century, the tale is one of the rise and fall of the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code test for legal insanity. Then it turns to the constitutional decisions of the United States Supreme Court concerning the status of legal insanity. Finally, it addresses the substantive and procedural changes that …