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2019

Law and Psychology

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Full-Text Articles in Law

Awareness Of Sex Offender Registration Policies And Self-Reported Sexual Offending In A Community Sample Of Adolescents, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Hayley M. D. Cleary Nov 2019

Awareness Of Sex Offender Registration Policies And Self-Reported Sexual Offending In A Community Sample Of Adolescents, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Hayley M. D. Cleary

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Sex offender registration laws are widely implemented, increasingly restrictive, and intended to serve both specific and general deterrent functions. Most states have some form of policy mechanism to place adolescents on sex offender registries, yet it remains unclear whether adolescents possess the requisite policy awareness to be deterred from sexual offending. This study examined awareness of sex offender registration as a potential sanction and its cross-sectional association with engagement in several registrable sexual behaviors (sexting, indecent exposure, sexual solicitation, and forcible touching) in a community sample of 144 adolescents. Results revealed that many adolescents were unaware that these behaviors could …


Replaying The Past: Roles For Emotion In Judicial Invocations Of Legislative History, And Precedent, Emily Kidd White Nov 2019

Replaying The Past: Roles For Emotion In Judicial Invocations Of Legislative History, And Precedent, Emily Kidd White

Articles & Book Chapters

Legal reasoning in the common law tradition requires judges to draw on concepts, and examples that are meant to resonate with a particular emotional import and operate in judicial reasoning as though they do. Judicial applications of constitutional rights are regularly interpreted by reference to past violations (either through precedent, contextual framings, and/or legislative history), which in turn elicit a series of emotions which work to deepen and intensify judicial understandings of a right guarantee (freedom of association, freedom of expression, equality, security of the person, etc.). This paper examines the way in which invocations of past political histories, and …


Do Criminal Minds Cause Crime? Neuroscience And The Physicalism Dilemma, John A. Humbach Oct 2019

Do Criminal Minds Cause Crime? Neuroscience And The Physicalism Dilemma, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The idea that mental states cause actions is a basic premise of criminal law. Blame and responsibility presuppose that criminal acts are products of the defendant's mind. Yet, the assumption that mental causation exists is at odds with physicalism, the widely shared worldview that “everything is physical.” Outside of law, there is probably no field of secular study in which one can seriously assert that unseen nonmaterial forces can cause physical events. But if physicalism is true then a fundamental premise of modern criminal justice must be false, namely, that criminals deserve punishment because their crimes are the products of …


Capitalizing On Healthy Lawyers: The Business Case For Law Firms To Promote And Prioritize Lawyer Well-Being, Jarrod F. Reich Aug 2019

Capitalizing On Healthy Lawyers: The Business Case For Law Firms To Promote And Prioritize Lawyer Well-Being, Jarrod F. Reich

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article is the first to make the business case for firms to promote and prioritize lawyer well-being. For more than three decades, quantitative research has demonstrated that lawyers suffer from depression, anxiety, and addiction far in excess of the general population. Since that time, there have been many calls within and outside the profession for changes to be made to promote, prioritize, and improve lawyer well-being, particularly as many aspects of the current law school and law firm models exacerbate mental health and addiction issues, as well as overall law student and lawyer distress. These calls for change, made …


Law Library Blog (August 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law Aug 2019

Law Library Blog (August 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.


Against The Received Wisdom: Why The Criminal Justice System Should Give Kids A Break, Stephen J. Morse Jul 2019

Against The Received Wisdom: Why The Criminal Justice System Should Give Kids A Break, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

Professor Gideon Yaffe’s recent, intricately argued book, The Age of Culpability: Children and the Nature of Criminal Responsibility, argues against the nearly uniform position in both law and scholarship that the criminal justice system should give juveniles a break not because on average they have different capacities relevant to responsibility than adults, but because juveniles have little say about the criminal law, primarily because they do not have a vote. For Professor Yaffe, age has political rather than behavioral significance. The book has many excellent general analyses about responsibility, but all are in aid of the central thesis about …


Assessing Cognitive Interview Mnemonics And Their Effectiveness With Non-Native English Speakers, Bryan Keith Wylie Jun 2019

Assessing Cognitive Interview Mnemonics And Their Effectiveness With Non-Native English Speakers, Bryan Keith Wylie

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The cognitive interview is a widely recommended forensic interviewing strategy which elicits more details than comparison interviews. However, little research has attended to which of its component mnemonics drive the overall effect. Furthermore, some mnemonics—like asking witnesses to recall in reverse order—are cognitively demanding. Responding to cognitively demanding interview mnemonics may be challenging for witnesses who are already under heavy cognitive load, such as non-native English speakers. Speaking a second language is a cognitively difficult task that may leave non-native English speakers with limited cognitive resources to devote to complex interviewing mnemonics. Other mnemonics, though, may be particularly beneficial for …


Brief Of Amicus Curiae 290 Criminal Law And Mental Health Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner's Request For Reversal And Remand, Kahler V. Kansas, 18-6135 (U.S. June 6, 2019), Paul F. Rothstein Jun 2019

Brief Of Amicus Curiae 290 Criminal Law And Mental Health Law Professors In Support Of Petitioner's Request For Reversal And Remand, Kahler V. Kansas, 18-6135 (U.S. June 6, 2019), Paul F. Rothstein

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Amici curiae are a group of philosophically and politically diverse law school professors and scholars in the fields of criminal law and mental health from a variety of disciplines who have been teaching and writing about the insanity defense and related issues throughout their careers. They include the authors of leading criminal law and mental health law treatises and casebooks and numerous important scholarly books and articles.

Amici believe this case raises important questions about principles of criminal responsibility, the integral role of the insanity defense in Anglo-American law, and the inadequacy of the “mens rea alternative” to the traditional …


Deploying Mindfulness To Gain Cognitive Advantage: Considerations For Military Effectiveness And Well-Being, Amishi P. Jha, Scott L. Rogers, Eric Schoomaker, Edward Cardon Apr 2019

Deploying Mindfulness To Gain Cognitive Advantage: Considerations For Military Effectiveness And Well-Being, Amishi P. Jha, Scott L. Rogers, Eric Schoomaker, Edward Cardon

Articles

Mindfulness involves paying attention to present moment experience without discursive commentary or emotional reactivity. Mindfulness training (MT) programs aim to promote this mental mode via introduction to specific mindfulness exercises, related in-class discussion, and ongoing engagement in mindfulness exercises. MT is being increasingly offered to high-demand, high-stress military/uniformed and civilian cohorts with a wide array of reported benefits. Herein, we begin by discussing recent theoretical models regarding MT’s mechanisms of action from a cognitive training/cognitive neuroscience perspective, which propose that MT engages and strengthens three key processes [e.g., 1]. These are: 1) attentional orienting, which is the ability to select …


The Challenge Of Convincing Ethical Prosecutors That Their Profession Has A Brady Problem, Adam M. Gershowitz Apr 2019

The Challenge Of Convincing Ethical Prosecutors That Their Profession Has A Brady Problem, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

In recent decades, both the media and legal scholars have documented the widespread problem of prosecutors failing to disclose favorable evidence to the defense – so called Brady violations. Despite all of this documentation however, many ethical prosecutors reject the notion that the criminal justice system has a Brady problem. These prosecutors – ethical lawyers who themselves have not been accused of misconduct – believe that the scope of the Brady problem is exaggerated. Why do ethical prosecutors downplay the evidence that some of their colleagues have committed serious errors?

This essay, in honor of Professor Bennett Gershman, points to …


Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On You Again: How Disparate Treatment Doctrine Perpetuates Racial Hierarchy, David Simson Apr 2019

Fool Me Once, Shame On You; Fool Me Twice, Shame On You Again: How Disparate Treatment Doctrine Perpetuates Racial Hierarchy, David Simson

Articles & Chapters

Title VII race discrimination doctrine is excessively hostile to workers of color, and many observers agree that it needs to be fixed. Yet comparatively few analyses of the doctrine weave together doctrinal and theoretical insights with systematic empirical findings from social science. This Article looks to Social Dominance Theory—a social psychology theory with a robust body of supporting empirical research—to take on this task and connect judicial interpretation of Title VII to the human tendency to create and maintain group-based hierarchies. In doing so, the Article questions the common view that Title VII race discrimination doctrine is symmetrical, protecting all …


Police Surveillance Of Cell Phone Location Data: Supreme Court Versus Public Opinion, Emma W. Marshall, Jennifer L. Groscup, Eve Brank, Analay Perez, Lori A. Hoetger Jan 2019

Police Surveillance Of Cell Phone Location Data: Supreme Court Versus Public Opinion, Emma W. Marshall, Jennifer L. Groscup, Eve Brank, Analay Perez, Lori A. Hoetger

Center on Children, Families, and the Law: Faculty Publications

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures. As technology evolves, courts must examine Fourth Amendment concerns implicated by the introduction of new and enhanced police surveillance techniques. Recent Supreme Court cases have demonstrated a trend towards reconsidering the mechanical application of traditional Fourth Amendment doctrine to define the scope of constitutional protections for modern technological devices and personal data. The current research examined whether public opinion regarding privacy rights in electronic communications is in accordance with these Supreme Court rulings. Results suggest that cell phone location data is perceived as more private and …


How People Make Sense Of Drones Used For Atmospheric Science (And Other Purposes): Hopes, Concerns, And Recommendations, Janell C. Walther, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Carrick Detweiler, Adam L. Houston Jan 2019

How People Make Sense Of Drones Used For Atmospheric Science (And Other Purposes): Hopes, Concerns, And Recommendations, Janell C. Walther, Lisa M. Pytlikzillig, Carrick Detweiler, Adam L. Houston

Lisa PytlikZillig Publications

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) can advance understanding of the atmosphere and improve weather prediction, but public perceptions of drone technologies need to be assessed to ensure successful societal integration. Our qualitative study examines public perceptions of UAS technology, and the associated risks and benefits, for such civilian purposes. We examine how people form perceptions, and discuss the implications of these perceptions for UAS design and regulation. Our study finds the public to be favorable toward UAS used for “noble” purposes. Participant views are informed by popular media, personal experiences, comparisons between technologies, and consideration of the trustworthiness of the users, …


Taking Laughter Seriously At The Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag Jan 2019

Taking Laughter Seriously At The Supreme Court, Tonja Jacobi, Matthew Sag

Faculty Articles

Laughter in Supreme Court oral arguments has been misunderstood, treated as either a lighthearted distraction from the Court’s serious work, or interpreted as an equalizing force in an otherwise hierarchical environment. Examining the more than nine thousand instances of laughter witnessed at the Court since 1955, this Article shows that the Justices of the Supreme Court use courtroom humor as a tool of advocacy and a signal of their power and status. As the Justices have taken on a greater advocacy role in the modern era, they have also provoked more laughter.

The performative nature of courtroom humor is apparent …


Emotional Appraisals In The Wake Of Hurricanes Harvey And Maria, Olympia Duhart Jan 2019

Emotional Appraisals In The Wake Of Hurricanes Harvey And Maria, Olympia Duhart

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


(Un)Conscious Judging, Elizabeth Thornburg Jan 2019

(Un)Conscious Judging, Elizabeth Thornburg

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Fact inferences made by the trial judge are the lynchpin of civil litigation. If inferences were a matter of universally held logical deductions, this would not be troubling. Inferences, however, are deeply contestable conclusions that vary from judge to judge. Non-conscious psychological phenomena can lead to flawed reasoning, implicit bias, and culturally influenced perceptions. Inferences differ significantly, and they matter. Given the homogeneous makeup of the judiciary, this is a significant concern.

This Article will demonstrate the ubiquity, importance, and variability of inferences by examining actual cases in which trial and appellate (or majority and dissenting) judges draw quite different …


Capital And Punishment: Resource Scarcity Increases Endorsement Of The Death Penalty, Keelah E. G. Williams, Ashley M. Votruba, Steven L. Neuberg, Michael J. Saks Jan 2019

Capital And Punishment: Resource Scarcity Increases Endorsement Of The Death Penalty, Keelah E. G. Williams, Ashley M. Votruba, Steven L. Neuberg, Michael J. Saks

Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications

Faced with punishing severe offenders, why do some prefer imprisonment whereas others impose death? Previous research exploring death penalty attitudes has primarily focused on individual and cultural factors. Adopting a functional perspective, we propose that environmental features may also shape our punishment strategies. Individuals are attuned to the availability of resources within their environments. Due to heightened concerns with the costliness of repeated offending, we hypothesize that individuals tend toward elimination-focused punishments during times of perceived scarcity. Using global and United States data sets (studies 1 and 2), we find that indicators of resource scarcity predict the presence of capital …


Lgbtq+ Individuals, Health Inequities, And Policy Implications, Heather A. Walter-Mccabe, Killian M. Kinney Jan 2019

Lgbtq+ Individuals, Health Inequities, And Policy Implications, Heather A. Walter-Mccabe, Killian M. Kinney

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.


Introducing An Interdisciplinary Frontier To Judging, Emotion And Emotion Work, Terry Maroney, Stina B. Blix, Kathy Mack, Sharyn R. Anleu Jan 2019

Introducing An Interdisciplinary Frontier To Judging, Emotion And Emotion Work, Terry Maroney, Stina B. Blix, Kathy Mack, Sharyn R. Anleu

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This special issue of Oñati Socio-Legal Series, titled Judging, Emotion and Emotion Work, is the result of presentations and discussions during an interdisciplinary workshop at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) held in May 2018. This issue builds on the growing critique of the dispassionate ideal of judicial work, combining original theoretical insights with imaginative empirical analyses to extend the understanding of emotion in judging. Fifteen articles are presented in four themes: Theoretical, cultural and historical perspectives; Tensions of the dispassionate ideal; Social dynamics of emotion in judging; and Research methods, empirical insights and [changing] judicial practice. …


Empirically Investigating Judicial Emotion, Terry A. Maroney Jan 2019

Empirically Investigating Judicial Emotion, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The empirical study of judicial emotion has enormous but largely untapped potential to illuminate a previously underexplored aspect of judging, its processes, outputs, and impacts. After defining judicial emotion, this article proposes a theoretical taxonomy of approaches to its empirical exploration. It then presents and analyses extant examples of such research, with a focus on how the questions they ask fit within the taxonomy and the methods they use to answer those questions. It concludes by identifying areas for growth in the disciplined, data-based exploration of the many facets of judicial emotion.


Shooting The Messenger, Leslie K. John, Hayley Blunden, Heidi H. Liu Jan 2019

Shooting The Messenger, Leslie K. John, Hayley Blunden, Heidi H. Liu

All Faculty Scholarship

Eleven experiments provide evidence that people have a tendency to ‘shoot the messenger,’ deeming innocent bearers of bad news unlikeable. In a pre-registered lab experiment, participants rated messengers who delivered bad news from a random drawing as relatively unlikeable (Study 1). A second set of studies points to the specificity of the effect: Study 2A shows that it is unique to the (innocent) messenger, and not mere bystanders. Study 2B shows that it is distinct from merely receiving information that one disagrees with. We suggest that people’s tendency to deem bearers of bad news as unlikeable stems in part from …


Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang Jan 2019

Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Mindfulness involves paying attention with curiosity in an intentional, open, and compassionate way to life as it unfolds moment to moment. Law students, lawyers, law professors, legal clients, and indeed all people can improve their lives through mindfulness. Mindfulness can lead to individual benefits and personal transformation. Mindfulness can also lead to societal benefits and social change. This invited symposium contribution exemplifies how mindfulness can facilitate the positive personal and professional development of law students by presenting excerpts of law students’ answers discussing mindfulness to questions from the final examination of the course: Legal Ethics and Professionalism. Notably, none of …


Juror Gender And Confession Evidence: An Exploratory Study Of Effects On Empathy And Trial Outcomes For Juvenile Defendants, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jennifer N. Weintraub Jan 2019

Juror Gender And Confession Evidence: An Exploratory Study Of Effects On Empathy And Trial Outcomes For Juvenile Defendants, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Jennifer N. Weintraub

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

Objectives: We explored how relations among juror gender, confession evidence, and empathy impacted verdicts for a juvenile defendant accused of a serious crime. Methods: Jury-eligible women and men (N = 128) participated in a mock trial involving a girl defendant who had either maintained her innocence, confessed voluntarily, or confessed under coercion. Participants reviewed case materials, received juror instructions, and reported their verdict and empathy for the girl defendant. A manipulation check ensured participants attended to details surrounding the confession and participants were grouped by whether they perceived the confession as voluntary or coerced. A logistic regression analysis examined main …


Rating Analyst Degrees Of Freedom, Vijay Raghavan Jan 2019

Rating Analyst Degrees Of Freedom, Vijay Raghavan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Aesthetics Of Disability, Jasmine E. Harris Jan 2019

The Aesthetics Of Disability, Jasmine E. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

The foundational faith of disability law is the proposition that we can reduce disability discrimination if we can foster interactions between disabled and nondisabled people. This central faith, which is rooted in contact theory, has encouraged integration of people with and without disabilities, with the expectation that contact will reduce preju­dicial atti­tudes and shift societal norms. However, neither the scholarship nor disa­bility law sufficiently accounts for what this Article calls the “aesthetics of disability,” the proposition that our interaction with dis­ability is medi­ated by an affective process that inclines us to like, dislike, be attracted to, or be repulsed by …


Neuroscience, Justice And The "Mental Causation" Fallacy, John A. Humbach Jan 2019

Neuroscience, Justice And The "Mental Causation" Fallacy, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Mental causation is a foundational assumption of modern criminal justice. The law takes it for granted that wrongdoers “deserve” punishment because their acts are caused by intentions, reasons and other mental states. A growing body of neuroscience evidence shows, however, that human behavior is produced by observable physiological activity in the brain and central nervous system--all in accordance with ordinary physical laws. Beyond these ordinary physiological interactions and processes, no hypothesis of mental causation is required to causally explain behavior.

Despite the evidence, neuroskeptics insist that intentions, reasons and other mental states can play a causal role in producing human …


Neurohype And The Law: A Cautionary Tale, Stephen J. Morse Jan 2019

Neurohype And The Law: A Cautionary Tale, Stephen J. Morse

All Faculty Scholarship

This chapter suggests that for conceptual, empirical, and practical reasons, neuroscience in general and non-invasive brain imaging in particular are not likely to revolutionize the law and our conception of ourselves, but may make modest contributions to legal policy and case adjudication if the legal relevance of the science is properly understood.


Windmills Of Your Mind: Understanding The Neurobiology Of Emotion, Debra S. Austin Jan 2019

Windmills Of Your Mind: Understanding The Neurobiology Of Emotion, Debra S. Austin

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This article proposes that law students, legal educators, and lawyers will benefit from developing their neuro-intelligence, as well as their understanding of the impact of emotion and stress on performance, and the how building mental strength can empower their professional and personal lives. With greater neuro-intelligence, individuals can improve well-being and performance, and organizations can leverage healthy human beings to enhance capacity and innovation.


Mediator Burnout, Lydia Nussbaum Jan 2019

Mediator Burnout, Lydia Nussbaum

Scholarly Works

Being a mediator is hard work Mediators must make meaningful connections with individuals without over-stepping bounds of impartiality, manage emotions without becoming emotionally invested, and empower decision-making without undermining self-determination. Decades of research into occupational stress, also known as "burnout," indicates that mediators not only are susceptible to burnout, but also that the symptoms of burnout undermine fundamental principles of quality mediation. For example, a burned-out mediator may exhibit narrow and uncreative thinking, diminished capacity to regulate emotions, compromised decision-making, and deficits in attention and memory.

The prospect of mediator burnout not only threatens the quality of mediation, but it …


Temptation's Page Flies Out The Door: Navigating Complex Systems Of Disability And The Law From A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Perspective, Michael L. Perlin, Mehgan Gallagher Jan 2019

Temptation's Page Flies Out The Door: Navigating Complex Systems Of Disability And The Law From A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Perspective, Michael L. Perlin, Mehgan Gallagher

Articles & Chapters

This article considers the difficulties inherent in the navigation of the legal system and the disability system, difficulties made more complicated when these systems intersect. Although this problem is not a new one, remarkably, it has never been the subject of any legal scholarship. We argue here that it is futile to consider either system to be a uniform one, and that to make any sense of the underlying ambiguities, it is necessary to consider both the potential conflicts both between domestic and international law (using fitness to proceed to trial as a case example), and the conflicts between social …