Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 21 of 21

Full-Text Articles in Law

Stigma In The Statute: When The Language Of The Law Injures, Stacey A. Tovino Feb 2023

Stigma In The Statute: When The Language Of The Law Injures, Stacey A. Tovino

William & Mary Law Review

Jurists frequently consider the extent to which a writer’s or speaker’s harmful statements may be actionable under the law. But what should be done when the law itself contains harmful language? Consider the case of individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD). Hundreds of federal and state statutes refer to these individuals as “addicts,” “abusers,” “alcoholics,” “drunkards,” “inebriates,” and “intemperates.” These statutes exist notwithstanding research showing that these words provoke negative thinking by others, including thinking that individuals with AUD are more deserving of punishment and less deserving of treatment. These laws persist in the face of research showing that these …


Collective Cognitive Capital, Emily R. D. Murphy Mar 2022

Collective Cognitive Capital, Emily R. D. Murphy

William & Mary Law Review

This Article calls for a new project for law and neuroscience. It outlines a structural, not individual, application of brain and behavioral science that is aligned with the general goal of basic science research: improving the lives of citizens with a better understanding of the human experience. It asks brain and behavioral science to move explicitly into public policy territory, and specifically onto ground more traditionally occupied by economists—but in ways the project of “behavioral economics” has not yet ventured. Put simply, policy analysts should focus on brains—“collective cognitive capital”—with the same intensity with which they focus on money, rights, …


Free Speech, Rational Deliberation, And Some Truths About Lies, Alan K. Chen Nov 2020

Free Speech, Rational Deliberation, And Some Truths About Lies, Alan K. Chen

William & Mary Law Review

Could “fake news” have First Amendment value? This claim would seem to be almost frivolous given the potential for fake news to undermine two core functions of the freedom of speech—promoting democracy and facilitating the search for “truth,” as well as the corollary that to be valuable, speech must promote rational deliberation. Some would therefore claim that fake news should be classified as “no value” speech falling outside of the First Amendment’s reach. This Article argues somewhat counterintuitively that fake news has value because speech doctrine should not be focused exclusively on the promotion of rational deliberation, but should also …


Trauma-Informed Advocacy: Learning To Empathize With Unspeakable Horrors, Susan Ayres Feb 2020

Trauma-Informed Advocacy: Learning To Empathize With Unspeakable Horrors, Susan Ayres

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

During the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, Christine Blasey Ford testified regarding an alleged sexual assault by Kavanaugh that had occurred thirty-five years earlier. Although some viewed Blasey Ford’s testimony as a doomed repeat of Anita Hill’s testimony during the hearings on the nomination of Clarence Thomas, one significant difference was that the Kavanaugh hearings demonstrated an increased public awareness of the impacts of trauma. And just as senators hired a prosecutor trained in trauma-informed lawyering to question Blasey Ford, today’s lawyers must understand how trauma …


Boost: Improving Mindfulness, Thinking, And Diversity, Peter H. Huang Nov 2018

Boost: Improving Mindfulness, Thinking, And Diversity, Peter H. Huang

William & Mary Business Law Review

Many important decisions can be difficult; require focused, cognitive attention; produce delayed, noisy feedback; benefit from careful and clear thinking; and quite often trigger anxiety, stress, and other strong, negative emotions. Much empirical, experimental, and field research finds that we often make decisions leading to outcomes we judge as suboptimal. These studies have contributed to the popularity of the idea of nudging people to achieve better outcomes by changing how choices and information are framed and presented (also known as choice architecture and information architecture). Although choice architecture and information architecture can nudge people into better outcomes, choice architecture and …


Social Value Orientation And The Law, Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff Nov 2017

Social Value Orientation And The Law, Rebecca Hollander-Blumoff

William & Mary Law Review

Social value orientation is a psychological trait defined as an individual’s natural preference with respect to the allocation of resources. Law and economics scholarship takes as its starting point the rational actor, who is by definition interested solely in maximizing her own personal utility. But social psychology research demonstrates that, in study after study, approximately half of individuals demonstrate a “prosocial” orientation, meaning that they are interested in maximizing the total outcome of the group and are dedicated to an equal split of resources. Only around a quarter of individuals identify as “proself” individualists who prefer to maximize their own …


Buying Happiness: Property, Acquisition, And Subjective Well-Being, David Fagundes May 2017

Buying Happiness: Property, Acquisition, And Subjective Well-Being, David Fagundes

William & Mary Law Review

Acquiring property is a central part of the modern American vision of the good life. The assumption that accruing more land or chattels will make us better off is so central to the contemporary preoccupation with acquisition that it typically goes without saying. Yet an increasing body of evidence from psychologists and economists who study hedonics—the science of happiness—yields the surprising conclusion that getting and having property does not actually increase our subjective well-being. In fact, it might even decrease it. While scholars have integrated the insights of hedonics into other areas of law, no scholarship has yet done so …


Reducing The Dangers Of Future Dangerousness Testimony: Applying The Federal Rules Of Evidence To Capital Sentencing, Jaymes Fairfax-Columbo, David Dematteo Mar 2017

Reducing The Dangers Of Future Dangerousness Testimony: Applying The Federal Rules Of Evidence To Capital Sentencing, Jaymes Fairfax-Columbo, David Dematteo

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The United States Supreme Court has long held that the death penalty cannot be imposed arbitrarily, and that during sentencing in capital cases, jurors must be provided with guidelines to assist them in narrowing down the class of individuals for whom the death penalty is appropriate. Typically, this is accomplished through the presentation of aggravating and mitigating evidence. One aggravating factor is a capital offender’s future dangerousness, or the likelihood that the individual will engage in violent institutional misconduct while in prison. Future dangerousness may be assessed using a variety of measures; Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), a measure of personality …


Recurrent Flooding And Social Vulnerability: A Model Ordinance, Sarah Edwards Feb 2017

Recurrent Flooding And Social Vulnerability: A Model Ordinance, Sarah Edwards

William & Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review

No abstract provided.


It’S Not Called Conduct Therapy; Talk Therapy As A Protected Form Of Speech Under The First Amendment, Warren Geoffrey Tucker Apr 2015

It’S Not Called Conduct Therapy; Talk Therapy As A Protected Form Of Speech Under The First Amendment, Warren Geoffrey Tucker

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.


A Tale Of Two (And Possibly Three) Atkins: Intellectual Disability And Capital Punishment Twelve Years After The Supreme Court’S Creation Of A Categorical Bar, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Paul Marcus, Emily Paavola Dec 2014

A Tale Of Two (And Possibly Three) Atkins: Intellectual Disability And Capital Punishment Twelve Years After The Supreme Court’S Creation Of A Categorical Bar, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Paul Marcus, Emily Paavola

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.


Scientizing Culpability: The Implications Of Hall V. Florida And The Possibility Of A “Scientific Stare Decisis”, Christopher Slobogin Dec 2014

Scientizing Culpability: The Implications Of Hall V. Florida And The Possibility Of A “Scientific Stare Decisis”, Christopher Slobogin

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Supreme Court’s decision in Hall v. Florida held that “clinical definitions” control the meaning of intellectual disability in the death penalty context. In other words, Hall “scientized” the definition of a legal concept. This Article discusses the implications of this unprecedented move. It also introduces the idea of scientific stare decisis—a requirement that groups that are scientifically alike be treated similarly for culpability purposes—as a means of implementing the scientization process.


The Daryl Atkins Story, Mark E. Olive Dec 2014

The Daryl Atkins Story, Mark E. Olive

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.


The True Legacy Of Atkins And Roper: The Unreliability Principle, Mentally Ill Defendants, And The Death Penalty’S Unraveling, Scott E. Sundby Dec 2014

The True Legacy Of Atkins And Roper: The Unreliability Principle, Mentally Ill Defendants, And The Death Penalty’S Unraveling, Scott E. Sundby

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

In striking down the death penalty for intellectually disabled and juvenile defendants, Atkins v. Virginia and Roper v. Simmons have been understandably heralded as important holdings under the Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence that has found the death penalty “disproportional” for certain types of defendants and crimes. This Article argues, however, that the cases have a far more revolutionary reach than their conventional understanding. In both cases the Court went one step beyond its usual two-step analysis of assessing whether imposing the death penalty violated “evolving standards of decency.” This extra step looked at why even though intellectual disability and youth …


Hall V. Florida: The Supreme Court’S Guidance In Implementing Atkins, James W. Ellis Dec 2014

Hall V. Florida: The Supreme Court’S Guidance In Implementing Atkins, James W. Ellis

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.


Does Atkins Make A Difference In Non-Capital Cases? Should It?, Paul Marcus Dec 2014

Does Atkins Make A Difference In Non-Capital Cases? Should It?, Paul Marcus

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.


Challenges Of Conveying Intellectual Disabilities To Judge And Jury, Caroline Everington Dec 2014

Challenges Of Conveying Intellectual Disabilities To Judge And Jury, Caroline Everington

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

No abstract provided.


Psychiatric Evidence In Criminal Trials: To Junk Or Not To Junk?, Christopher Slobogin Oct 1998

Psychiatric Evidence In Criminal Trials: To Junk Or Not To Junk?, Christopher Slobogin

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.


A Claim For Third Party Standing In Malpractice Cases Involving Repressed Memory Syndrome, Sheila F. Rock Oct 1995

A Claim For Third Party Standing In Malpractice Cases Involving Repressed Memory Syndrome, Sheila F. Rock

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.


Criminal Responsibilty - The Durham Rule - Washington V. United States, __ F.2d __ (D.C. Cir. 1967) May 1968

Criminal Responsibilty - The Durham Rule - Washington V. United States, __ F.2d __ (D.C. Cir. 1967)

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.


Book Review Of Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry, And The Law, Russell P. Norman May 1968

Book Review Of Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry, And The Law, Russell P. Norman

William & Mary Law Review

No abstract provided.