Law and Psychology Commons^™

Reflections On The Essential Role Of Legal Scholarship In Advancing Causes Of Citizen Groups, Nadine Strossen

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Expert Testimony In Capital Sentencing: Juror Responses, John H. Montgomery, J. Richard Ciccone, Stephen P. Garvey, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The U.S. Supreme Court, in Furman v. Georgia (1972), held that the death penalty is constitutional only when applied on an individualized basis. The resultant changes in the laws in death penalty states fostered the involvement of psychiatric and psychologic expert witnesses at the sentencing phase of the trial, to testify on two major issues: (1) the mitigating factor of a defendant’s abnormal mental state and (2) the aggravating factor of a defendant’s potential for future violence. This study was an exploration of the responses of capital jurors to psychiatric/psychologic expert testimony during capital sentencing. The Capital Jury Project is …

Embracing Segregation: The Jurisprudence Of Choice And Diversity In Race And Sex Separatism In Schools, Nancy Levit

Nancy Levit

Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, segregation based on race and sex is sweeping the nation's educational systems. Courts are rapidly dismantling desegregation orders, and when those desegregation orders end, school districts racially resegregate. At precisely the same time this end to racial desegregation is occurring, the government is beginning to sponsor sex segregation in schools as well. The No Child Left Behind Act provides over $400 million in federal funds for experiments in education, such as single-sex schools and classes. Embracing Segregation draws connections between the end of racial desegregation and the beginning of government-sponsored sex segregation …

Admitting Mental Health Evidence To Impeach The Credibility Of A Sexual Assault Complainant, Tess Wilkinson-Ryan

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Fear And Loathing In Constitutional Decision-Making, Christina E. Wells

Faculty Publications

National security crises are particularly difficult on the judiciary. Faced with a threat to the country's integrity, such cases require judges rationally and fairly to weigh this hefty interest against the rights of persons suspected of posing that very threat. Not surprisingly, judges have rarely lived up to this task as many have fallen sway to the same fear and prejudice that gripped the county during these times. Scholars have written extensively about judicial capitulation to fear and prejudice in such well-known cases as Schenck v. United States, Korematsu v. United States, and Dennis v. United States, with some lamenting …

Time-Inconsistent Management & The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Manuel A. Utset

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Comment: Mental Health Treatment And Mistreatment In Prisons, Joyce Kosak

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Voluntary Admission And Treatment Of Incompetent Persons With A Mental Illness, Karna Halverson

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Discrimination In Sentencing On The Basis Of Afrocentric Features, William T. Pizzi, Irene V. Blair, Charles M. Judd

Publications

For a long time, social scientists have worried about possible racial discrimination in sentencing in the United States. With a prison population that exceeds two million inmates of whom approximately 48% are African American, the worry over the fairness of the sentencing process is understandable. This article is not about discrimination between racial categories as such, but about a related form of discrimination, namely, discrimination on the basis of a person's Afro-centric features. Section I of the article describes a line of social science research that shows that a person's Afro-centric features have a strong biasing effect on judgment such …

And My Best Friend, My Doctor, Won't Even Say What It Is I'Ve Got: The Role And Significance Of Counsel In Right To Refuse Treatment Cases, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

For the past three decades, scholars have carefully considered the scope of the right of involuntarily committed psychiatric patients to refuse the administration of medication from a rich array of perspectives, including, but not limited to, clinical perspectives, civil libertarian perspectives, philosophical perspectives, and political perspectives. Yet, virtually all of this - remarkably - passes over what I believe is the single most important issue in real life. This issue is the most relevant to the actual (as opposed to paper) existence of theright and the actual (as opposed to paper) implementation of that right: the availability and adequacy ofcounsel …

Induced Autism The Legal And Ethical Implications Of Inoculating Vaccine Manufacturers From Liability, Helia Garrido Hull

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Moody Investing And The Supreme Court: Rethinking The Materiality Of Information And The Reasonableness Of Investors, Peter H. Huang

Publications

This Article critically analyzes the judicial decisions and reasoning of the United States Supreme Court and lower courts accepting certain defenses in securities fraud litigation. This Article develops how and why the core notions of materiality of information and the reasonable investor should be revised in light of recent empirical data, experimental evidence, and theoretical models of moody investing. This Article proposes modifying three recent developments in materiality doctrine to take into account moody investing. In particular, this Article argues that current judicial treatment of puffery is flawed because it neglects the power of puffery to alter moods. This Article …

Subjective Decisionmaking And Unconscious Discrimination, Melissa Hart

Publications

Unconscious bias is widely recognized as the most pervasive barrier to equal employment opportunity for minorities and women in the workplace today and yet many argue that federal laws prohibiting discrimination do not prohibit unconscious discrimination. This article argues that the law does in fact provide some redress for unconscious discrimination. Title VII may not be a perfect method for attacking unconscious bias, but it is a mistake to assume that it is without potential. The article challenges the assumption commonly held by judges that a finding of discrimination must be preceded by the belief that an employer is lying …

Attorneys' Perceptions Of Child Witnesses With Mental Retardation, Rebecca Nathanson

Scholarly Works

Children with mental retardation are more likely to be abused than the general population, yet are often denied access to the justice system. Research on children without mental retardation has revealed skepticism as to their reliability as witnesses in the court of law. Even more so, children with mental retardation face the issue of credibility because of their age and disability. This study assesses attorneys' perceptions of child witnesses with mental retardation. Thirty-nine criminal attorneys completed a 33-item questionnaire designed to assess their opinions of the abilities of adults and of children with and without mental retardation to recall and …

Criminal Law In A Post-Freudian World, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

Freudian psychoanalytic theory has greatly influenced the modern definition of criminal culpability. Indeed, much of the language of key criminal statutes, cases, and psychiatric testimony is framed by psychoanalytic concepts. This impact is particularly evident in the Model Penal Code's mens rea provisions and defenses, which were developed in the 1950s and 1960s, a time of Freudian reign in the United States. For contemporary criminal law, however, this degree of psychoanalytic presence is troublesome. Freudian theory is difficult to apply to group conflicts and legal situations, and the theory emphasizes unconscious (rather than conscious) thoughts. The rising new science of …

Multicultural Lawyering: Teaching Psychology To Develop Cultural Self-Awareness, Carwina Weng

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Much of the current literature in multicultural lawyering focuses on learning substantive information about clients who are culturally different from the lawyer, such as how the client's culture perceives eye contact or reacts to science-based world views. This article notes that such a focus sidesteps the human reality that every person reacts to people who are different from him- or herself unconsciously in ways that may be culturally insensitive and discriminatory and that this human reaction occurs despite awareness of the general values, attitudes, and beliefs of the client's culture. It therefore suggests that multicultural lawyering training should begin with …

Credible Coercion, Oren Bar-Gill, Omri Ben-Shahar

Articles

The ideal of individual freedom and autonomy requires that society provide relief against coercion. In the law, this requirement is often translated into rules that operate "postcoercion" to undo the legal consequences of acts and promises extracted under duress. This Article argues that these ex post antiduress measures, rather than helping the coerced party, might in fact hurt her. When coercion is credible-when a credible threat to inflict an even worse outcome underlies the surrender of the coerced party-ex post relief will only induce the strong party to execute the threatened outcome ex ante, without offering the choice to surrender, …

Developmental Incompetence, Due Process, And Juvenile Justice Policy, Elizabeth S. Scott, Thomas Grisso

Faculty Scholarship

In 2003, the Florida District Court of Appeal reversed the murder conviction and life sentence imposed on Lionel Tate, who was twelve years old when he killed his six-year-old neighbor. Since Lionel was reported to be the youngest person in modern times to be sent to prison for life, the case had generated considerable debate, and the decision was appealed on several grounds. What persuaded the appellate court that the conviction could not stand, however, was the trial court's rejection of a petition by Lionel's attorney for an evaluation of his client's competence to assist counsel and to make a …

Limited In Sex, They Dare: Attitudes Toward Issues Of Patient Sexuality, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The author frequently speaks on issues involving the sexuality rights of persons with mental disabilities who are institutionalized. In this article, he discusses the prevalent attitudes of audience members to these presentations, attitudes ranging from anger to denial to projection to transference/countertransference to fear to expressions of religiosity. In some cases, an important connection is made between the speaker and audience members. The article considers these attitudes and seeks to offer explanations for why this is such a threatening topic to so many listeners.

Criminal Prosecution And Civil Remedies For Victims Of Sexual Offenses: Amendment Of The Rape Shield Law, Carol E. Jordan, Elizabeth S. Hughes, Mary Jo Gleason

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

In 2003, the Kentucky Supreme Court adopted the amended KRS 412, effectively making the language of KRE 412 consistent with the analogous Federal Rule of Evidence 412. Now, as in federal court, the provisions of the Rape Shield Law apply in both criminal and civil cases to govern when and how evidence of a victim's alleged sexual behavior or sexual predisposition may be introduced. The article describes the intent of the original Rape Shield Law and the implications of its amended version in both civil and criminal cases.

Adjudicatory And Dispositional Decision Making In Juvenile Justice, Richard E. Redding

Richard E. Redding

Juvenile court judges and others working in the juvenile justice system have a wide variety of dispositional and sentencing options available for the juvenile offenders under their jurisdiction. For serious, violent or chronic offenders, these options increasingly involve transferring juveniles from juvenile court for trial and sentencing in the criminal court as well as blended juvenile and adult sentences. This chapter provides an overview of the adjudicatory and dispositional options available for handling juvenile offenders in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The research on adjudicatory and dispositional decision making is reviewed, and directions for future law and policy development …

The Discourse Beneath: Emotional Epistemology In Legal Deliberation And Negotiation, Erin Ryan

Erin Ryan

All lawyers negotiate, and all negotiators deliberate. This article addresses the pervasive but unrefined use of emotional insight by deliberating and negotiating lawyers, and suggests that legal education could improve lawyering by adopting a fuller model of legal thinking that takes account of this “epistemological emotionality.” In forming the beliefs that underlie choices made during deliberation and negotiation, people rely on insights informed by past and present emotional experience. Such epistemological emotional input fuels a pre-linguistic, quasi-inductive reasoning process that enables us to draw on stored information about emotional phenomena to hypothesize about motives, behavior, and potential consequences. As deliberation …

8. Speaking With Children: Advice From Investigative Interviewers., Thomas D. Lyon

Thomas D. Lyon