Law Commons^™

Law And Identifiability, Daphna Lewinsohn-Zamir, Ilana Ritov, Tehila Kogut

Indiana Law Journal

Psychological studies have shown that people react either more generously or more punitively toward identified individuals than toward unidentified ones. This phenomenon, named the identifiability effect, has received little attention in the legal literature, despite its importance for the law. As a prime example, while legislators typically craft rules that would apply to unidentified people, judges ordinarily deal with identified individuals. The identifiability effect suggests that the outcomes of these two forms of lawmaking may differ, even when they pertain to similar facts and situations.

This Article is a preliminary investigation into the relevance of the identifiability effect for law …

A Behavioral Theory Of Legal Ethics, Andrew M. Perlman

Indiana Law Journal

Behavioral insights have informed many areas of law, including the field of professional responsibility. Those insights, however, have had only a modest effect on the foundational theories of legal ethics, even though those theories are, at their core, prescriptions about human behavior. The reality is that lawyers’ conduct cannot be understood, theorized about, or used to produce the best possible regulations without an appreciation for the limits on human rationality and objectivity. A behavioral theory of legal ethics offers a way to incorporate those realties into the foundational debates on a lawyer’s professional role so that scholars can produce more …

Dualism And Doctrine, Dov Fox, Alex Stein

Indiana Law Journal

What kinds of harm among those that tortfeasors inflict are worthy of compensation? Which forms of self-incriminating evidence are privileged against government compulsion? What sorts of facts constitute a criminal defendant’s intent? Existing doctrine pins the answer to all of these questions on whether the injury, facts, or evidence at stake are “mental” or “physical.” The assumption that operations of the mind are meaningfully distinct from those of the body animates fundamental rules in our law.

A tort victim cannot recover for mental harm on its own because the law presumes that he is able to unfeel any suffering arising …

"Why Rebottle The Genie?": Capitalizing On Closure In Death Penalty Proceedings, Jody L. Madeira

Indiana Law Journal

Closure, though a term with great rhetorical force in the capital punishment context, has to date evaded systematic analysis, instead becoming embroiled in ideological controversy. For victims who have rubbed the rights lamp for years, inclusion in capital proceedings and accompanying closure opportunities are perceived as a force with the potential to grant wishes of peace and finality. Scholars, however, argue for rebottling the closure genie lest closure itself prove false or its pursuit violate a defendant's constitutional rights. In order to effectively appraise the relationship of closure to criminal jurisprudence, however, and thus to decide whether and to what …

Law And The Emotions: The Problems Of Affective Forecasting, Jeremy A. Blumenthal

Indiana Law Journal

Legal scholarship on "behavioralism" and the implications of cognitive biases for the law is flourishing. In parallel with the rise of such commentary, legal scholars have begun to discuss the role of the emotions in legal discourse. This discussion often addresses the "appropriateness" of various emotions for the substantive law, or attempts to model the place of the emotions in the law. Implicit in some of these theories, however, and explicit in others, is the assumption that emotions are "predictable," "manageable, "and (for some commentators) under conscious control. This assumption is belied by psychological research on affective forecasting that demonstrates …

A Psychologist's Perspective On Capital Juries, Steven J. Sherman

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Toward A Model Death Penalty Code: The Massachusetts Governor's Council Report.

The Capital Jury Project: The Role Of Responsibility And How Psychology Can Inform The Law, Steven J. Sherman

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: The Capital Jury Project

The Limits Of A Scientific Jurisprudence: The Supreme Court And Psychology, J. Alexander Tanford

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Group Therapy And Privileged Communication, Robert Jay Braman

Indiana Law Journal

No abstract provided.