Law and Psychology Commons^™

Children Going West, Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

(Review Essay of Hillary Clinton, it Takes a Village) This Times Literary Supplement (London) review essay from 1996 takes up Hillary Rodham Clinton's It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us, and Emmy E. Werner's, Pioneer Children on the Journey West. The review takes a tough line against the therapeutic yet simultaneously authoritarian ethic of Clinton's book; it argues that Clinton has essentially conflated a set of local community institutions - places of identity - with state institutions of therapeutic and social control - bureaucratic loci of state management of deracinated, passive individuals. It sets this against the …

The Color Of Truth: Race And The Assessment Of Credibility, Sheri Lynn Johnson

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article will address specifically the relationship between race and credibility in legal cases, while acknowledging that broader bias issues are often, though sometimes imperceptibly, intertwined in racially biased credibility determinations. Part I will survey race and credibility issues that have arisen in courts, with particular focus on two modern habeas corpus cases. Part II will summarize the legal rules that presently regulate racially influenced assessments of credibility; it may surprise some readers to realize that there is no established mechanism for challenging racially biased credibility determinations. Part I will propose some standards for determining when race is permissibly used …

On Humiliation, Jeremy Waldron

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Humiliation, and Other Essays on Honor, Social Discomfort, and Violence by William Ian Miller

Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

The jury's competence, unlike that of the judge, rests partly on its ability to reflect the perspectives, experiences, and values of the ordinary people in the community - not just the most common or typical community perspective, but the whole range of viewpoints.

Aiding And Altruism: A Mythopsycholegal Analysis, Thomas C. Galligan Jr.

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article asserts that traditional tort law should be modified to provide for a duty to act in situations in which a reasonable person would act altruistically. Part I examines traditional and more recent tort doctrine governing the duty to aid. Part II discusses compassion from philosophical, literary, and mythological points of view and explores how these viewpoints inform compassion's possible relationship to a legal duty to help. Part III considers the connections between psychological theories and studies of action, altruism, and empathy. In addition to Batson's work, I reexamine the classic studies of Latan6 and Darley and the application …

Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Understanding The Sanist And Pretextual Bases Of Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Symposium: Therapeutic Jurisprudence: From Idea to Application

Mindlessness And Nondurable Precautions, Paul J. Heald

Scholarly Works

Assuming initially that negligence law does not make the distinction between durable and nondurable precautions, this Article will first explain in economic terms why the failure of courts to take into account the cost of remembering may nonetheless be efficient. A substantial body of research on the phenomenon of mindless decisionmaking ("scripting") suggests that most remembering is automatic--a nonconscious response to frequently encountered patterns of stimuli. Script theory suggests that once the behavioral script is in place, an automatic response operates at a very low cost. If so, the failure of courts to account for the cost of remembering would …

"If He Speaks Italian It's Better": Metapragmatics In Court, Marco Jacquemet

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

Judgment And Reasoning In Adolescent Decisionmaking, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Few people believe that five year olds and fifteen year olds think, act or make decisions in the same way. The question is whether and how the law should respond to developmental differences. Traditionally, childhood and adulthood have been two dichotomous legal categories, demarcated by the age of majority. This conception has been contested in recent years, as has the premise that all minors are incompetent to make decisions and function as legal actors. Fueled by the controversy over adolescent access to abortion, an advocacy movement has emerged that challenges the authority of parents and the state over the lives …

Shame, Culture, And American Criminal Law, Toni M. Massaro

Michigan Law Review

The purpose of this Article is to analyze whether this link is one that American criminal court judges can, or should, exploit. I begin with a description of the new shaming sanctions and the possible justifications for this type of penalty. I then identify both psychological and anthropological aspects of the phenomenon of shame, or "losing face." I describe several cultures in which shaming practices are, or were, significant means of sanctioning behavior, and outline the shared features of these cultures.

These psychological and anthropological materials, taken together, suggest that shaming practices are most effective and meaningful when five conditions …

Understanding Legal Compliance, V. Lee Hamilton

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Why People Obey the Law by Tom R. Tyler

Social Science And The Courts: The Role Of Amicus Curiae Briefs, Ronald G. Roesch, Stephen L. Golding, Valerie P. Hans, N. Dickon Reppucci

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Social scientists have increasingly become involved in the submission of amicus curiae or "friend of the court" briefs in legal cases being decided by state and federal courts. This increase has triggered considerable debate about the use of briefs to communicate relevant social science research. This article evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of various methods of summarizing social science research for the courts. It also reviews the procedures for submitting briefs developed by the American Psychology-Law Society which, in collaboration with the American Psychological Association, has submitted its first brief in Maryland v. Craig, a case recently decided by …

Crimes Of Obedience: Toward Social Psychology Of Authority And Responsibility, Michael Kenneth Isenman

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Crimes of Obedience: Toward Social Psychology of Authority and Responsibility by Herbert C. Kelman and V. Lee Hamilton

The Child Sexual Abuse Literature: A Call For Greater Objectivity, John E.B. Myers

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Accusations of Child Sexual Abuse by Hollida Wakefield and Ralph Underwager., The Battle and the Backlash: The Child Sexual Abuse War by David Hechler., On Trial: America's Courts and Their Treatment of Sexually Abused Children by Billie Wright Dziech and Chales B. Schudson.

Killing Daddy: Developing A Self-Defense Strategy For The Abused Child, Joelle A. Moreno

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Are Twelve Heads Better Than One?, Phoebe C. Ellsworth

Articles

Few advocates of the jury system would argue that the average juror is as competent a tribunal as the averagejudge. Whatever competence the jury has is a function of two of its attributes: its number and its interaction. The fact that a jury must be composed of at least six people,' with different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives, provides some protection against decisions based on an idiosyncratic view of the facts. Not only must the jury include at least six people, but they must be chosen in a manner that conforms to the ideal of the jury as representative of community …

Roscoe Pound And American Sociology: A Study In Archival Frame Analysis, Sociobiography And Sociological Jurisprudence, Michael R. Hill

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Roscoe Pound (1870-1964) was a noted botanist, jurist, and sociologist who founded the American school of sociological jurisprudence. Pound's sociological ideas originated at the University of Nebraska. Pound developed numerous ties to other sociologists, joined the American Sociological Society, and published in the American Journal of Sociology. Pound's modern erasure from sociological chronicles is attributed in part to hegemonic processes. The collection of archival data for this study in the history of sociology is generalized (by extending Erving Goffman's metatheory of meaning) as "archival frame analysis." Pound's intellectual milieu is analyzed using Mary Jo Deegan's theory of "core codes" …

Charles Guiteau And The Christian Nation, Carol Weisbrod

Faculty Articles and Papers

No abstract provided.

Understanding The Jury With The Help Of Social Science, Stephen Saltzburg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Inside the Jury by Reid Hastie, Steven Penrod and Nancy Pennington

Beyond Psychiatric Expertise (By Ben Bursten, M.D.), Bruce N. Morton

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Violence In College Students' Dating Relationships, Carol K. Sigelman, Carol E. Jordan-Berry, Katharine A. Wiles

Office for Policy Studies on Violence Against Women Publications

In a survey of 504 college students examining predictors of violence in heterosexual relationships, over half of both men and women had committed at least one physically violent act. Modest associations between physical violence and sexual aggression were uncovered. In a series of discriminant analyses, men who abused their partners were not readily distinguished from men who did not, but tended to by young, low in family income, traditional in attitudes toward women, abused as children, currently living with a women, and from Appalachian areas.

Public Opinion Of Forensic Psychiatry Following The Hinckley Verdict, Dan Slater, Valerie P. Hans

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The authors obtained opinions of forensic psychiatry in a community survey following the not guilty by reason of insanity verdict in the Hinckley trial. A majority of respondents expressed little or no confidence in the specific psychiatric testimony in the Hinckley trial and only modest faith in the general ability of psychiatrists to determine legal insanity. Respondents' general and specific attitudes were strongly related. Younger people and women were more positive in their views of psychiatry in the courtroom.

"Plain Crazy:" Lay Definitions Of Legal Insanity, Valerie P. Hans, Dan Slater

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The 1982 Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) verdict in the trial of John Hinckley, Jr., would-be assassin of President Reagan, again has brought to the forefront long-standing public dissatisfaction in the United States with the insanity plea. In the wake of the Hinckley verdict, proposals for reform or abolition of the insanity defense have been submitted to both houses of the U.S. Congress and to state legislatures throughout the nation (Cunningham, 1983). Fueling this reform movement is apparent public dissatisfaction with the insanity plea as it is currently defined.

In contrast to voluminous literature concerning legal and psychiatric …

John Hinckley, Jr. And The Insanity Defense: The Public's Verdict, Valerie P. Hans, Dan Slater

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Public furor over the Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity verdict in the trial of John Hinckley, Jr. already has stimulated legal changes in the insanity defense. This study documents more systematically the dimensions of negative public opinion concerning the Hinckley verdict. A survey of Delaware residents shortly after the trial's conclusion indicated that the verdict was perceived as unfair, Hinckley was viewed as not insane, the psychiatrists' testimony at the trial was not trusted, and the vast majority thought that the insanity defense was a loophole. However, survey respondents were unable to define the legal test for insanity and …

Zoning For The Mentally Ill: A Legislative Mandate, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

Under the aegis of President John Kennedy, Congress first began to concern itself with the needs of the mentally ill over two decades ago. Bills providing for community mental health centers and congregate housing have appeared subsequently to attempt to expedite integration of the mentally ill into community life. These congressional mandates, however, have met with reluctance-if not hostility. While federal law makers have been the champion of deinstitutionalization, they have placed responsibility for implementation of their programs on the state and local levels. There, local governmental authorities have reacted defensively to exclude the mentally ill from their neighborhoods, primarily …

The Xyy Syndrome And The Judicial System, Paul Cheverie

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law And Anarchy, Sidney Hook

University of Richmond Law Review

I wish to consider certain views and attitudes about law and government that seem widely held today, that encourage contempt for law and at least indirectly bear on current political behavior.

Challenges To Humanitarian Legal Approaches For Eliminating The Hazards Of Drunk Alcoholic Drivers, Joseph W. Little

Georgia Law Review

Two epidemics ravage this country. One is the plague of highway crashes that claims the lives of three scores of thousands of Americans each year. The other is the scourge of alcoholism that brings not only personal degradation to the lives of six million sufferers but also despair, hardship, suffering and death to countless nonalcoholic persons. As even a cursory review of current legal literature will reveal, research findings demonstrate beyond any doubt that these two epidemics are not mutually independent. Although one is rarely able to place definite causal blame upon any single factor in any instance, statistical evidence …

Driver Behavior And Legal Sanctions: A Study Of Deterrence, Roger C. Cramton

Michigan Law Review

This Article considers first the general understanding of legal scholars and criminologists regarding the deterrent effect of legal sanctions; a second part summarizes current knowledge concerning the effects of legal sanctions in controlling driver behavior; and a concluding section evaluates briefly the methods available for the development of needed new knowledge.

Legislation Requiring Child To Support Mother In State Asylum Is A Denial Of Equal Protection-Department Of Mental Hygiene V. Kirchner, Michigan Law Review

Michigan Law Review

The California Department of Mental Hygiene brought suit under section 6650 of the state's Welfare and Institutions Code, a provision commonly known as a relative support statute, against the administratrix to recover 7,500 dollars from the intestate's estate. This amount represented the cost of food, housing, and treatment received by intestate's mother in a state mental hospital during the four years she had been confined there following a civil sanity hearing. Plaintiff was granted judgment on the pleadings. On appeal to the California Supreme Court, held, reversed. Since mental hospitals serve a proper public function, it is a denial …