Law and Psychology Commons^™

A Meta-Analysis On Joinder Effects: Do They All Have The Same Magnitude?, Amelia M. Tisk

Student Theses

The present meta-analysis examined whether different forms of joinder and procedural consolidation produce varying levels of prejudice in adjudicative decision-making. Although joinder procedures improve judicial efficiency, psychological research has suggested that combining charges, defendants, or plaintiffs within a single proceeding may increase conviction likelihood, liability judgments, and broader perceptions of wrongdoing. A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted across 22 independent study effects examining charge joinder, defendant consolidation, plaintiff consolidation, multiple-complainant procedures, and related aggregation paradigms. Effect sizes were converted to Pearson’s r whenever possible. Overall, procedural aggregation produced a moderate effect on adjudicative outcomes, r = .27, 95% CI [.22, .32]. …

Susceptibility To Memory Errors Created By Leading Questions Based On The Perceived Authority Of Interviewer, Clay K. Wollard

Undergraduate Honors Theses

It has been well established that memory of an event can be modified by introducing misinformation through questioning. This study fills a gap in the research literature by testing the potential relationship between perceived authority and susceptibility to misinformation. This was measured through showing participants a video of a traffic accident and asking them questions about the events they witnessed. Participants were also asked to rate their confidence in the correctness of each answer to determine if there are any correlations between authority, correct answers, misinformation, and confidence. Authority was conveyed through the clothing worn by the researcher during each …

It's The Night Of The Living Deepfakes: The Threat Of Deepfakes On The Film Industry, Neki Shero

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Front Matter

DePaul Business & Commercial Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Place Names And Presidential Control, Austin Kruse

Northwestern University Law Review

Since the start of his second term, President Trump has issued executive orders at an extraordinary pace, using them to advance a broader ideological agenda across the administrative state. While scholarly attention has largely focused on the most sweeping of these directives, less prominent orders raise similar concerns about the reach of presidential power. This Note examines one such order: Executive Order 14,172, which directs the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali and expands presidential influence over the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN).

Although geographic naming is ostensibly apolitical, place names are deeply entangled with questions of …

From Stigma To Statute: A Historical And Legal Comparative Analysis Of Involuntary Commitment Laws In Idaho, Jessica Cambron

Idaho Law Review

A lesser-known area of law in Idaho concerns the involuntary civil commitment process, a process by which thousands of people per year are committed to hospitals around the state. These laws, specifically in Idaho, govern the criteria which must be met for a person to be placed on an involuntary hold, detained in a hospital setting awaiting proceedings, or potentially committed.

Understanding the evolution of mental illness and the role of involuntary commitment – including successes, failures, and challenges – is essential to navigating reform. This Comment provides a brief history of mental illness, including key cultural events and cases …

The Myth Of The Immigrant As A Criminal: Rhetoric, Otherness, And The Legal Construction Of Danger, Katerina Fernandez

Immigration and Human Rights Law Review

The figure of the “criminal immigrant” occupies a central place in contemporary U.S. immigration discourse, shaping public perception, enforcement priorities, and legal doctrine. Yet a substantial body of empirical research consistently demonstrates that immigrants—both documented and undocumented—commit crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. This Note examines why the narrative of immigrant criminality persists despite this evidence and how it influences the development and operation of immigration law. It argues that “immigrant” functions not only as a legal category but also as a socially constructed marker of Otherness, encompassing perceived differences in race, language, culture, and religion. Through this lens, …

Who's Qualified? Examining Attorney Perspectives On Lpcs In The Legal System, Becca Wilson, Bernave Vega

Posters - 2026

Legal cases frequently intersect with mental health concerns, positioning Licensed Professional Counselors (LPCs) to contribute clinical expertise in custody disputes, trauma documentation, and psychological functioning. As mental health issues become increasingly central to both civil and criminal proceedings, the working relationship between attorneys and counselors carries real consequences for clients, yet LPCs entering legal settings often face challenges related to role clarity, courtroom preparation, and professional credibility. Existing research has focused primarily on counselors' forensic experiences, leaving attorney perspectives on LPC involvement largely unexplored. This gap is meaningful, as attorneys serve as gatekeepers to expert involvement and their perceptions of …

(Mis)Judging Suspicion, Sherri Lee Keene

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Twenty-five years ago, the Supreme Court decided Illinois v. Wardlow, a Fourth Amendment case that allowed the high-crime nature of a location to be considered in determinations of whether there was reasonable suspicion to support a police stop. In making these determinations, courts rarely acknowledge the role that race can play in decisions that factor in the nature of a location as context. Yet even when the race of a defendant is not mentioned, high-crime area designations can act as a proxy for race inviting racial bias into courts’ analyses. Reasonable suspicion analysis involves the interpretation of a suspect’s …

The Hidden Tax Game, Doron Narotzki

William & Mary Business Law Review

Taxation is not just a legal duty; it is a game, and the best players always win. While governments rely on laws and penalties to enforce compliance, corporations, high-net-worth individuals, and elite tax strategists exploit loopholes, turning complexity into opportunity. This Article argues that tax avoidance is not a flaw in the system, but an expected outcome. Modern tax law does not just permit avoidance; it actively encourages it. The more intricate the rules, the more valuable it becomes to manipulate them.

Using game theory as an analytical lens, this Article reframes taxation as a high-stakes competition, where strategic players …

The Psychology Of A Favor: Why Hidden Witness Payments Demand A New Brady Rule, Adam M. Gershowitz

Faculty Publications

Prosecutors and the police regularly pay informants and other witnesses in criminal cases. These payments can be in the form of rewards, relocation expenses, crime victims funds, and even simple cash. Although witness payments are legal, prosecutors are supposed to disclose them under the Brady doctrine because they are favorable evidence that the defense could use to impeach the witness. Yet prosecutors often fail to disclose witness payments because of communication failures with the police, poor training, excessive caseloads, and occasional ethical lapses.

This Article examines dozens of hidden witness payments that prosecutors failed to disclose. In nearly eighty percent …

Lawyers’ Career Aspirations In Canada And The United States, Meghan Dawe, Ronit Dinovitzer

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Winging It: Convergence, Convivencia, And Belonging Of Latina Lawyers, Verónica C. Gonzales

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Outbound Investment Restrictions And International Law’S Challenge, Harlan Grant Cohen

Seattle University Law Review

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the …

Navigating Compliance In A Geopolitical Era: The Case Of Chinese Multinationals In The United States, Ji Li

Seattle University Law Review

This Article examines how Chinese multinational companies (MNCs) approach compliance in the United States amid deepening geo-political rivalry and intensified regulatory scrutiny. Drawing on original survey data, this Article maps variations in compliance structures, staffing, and governance mechanisms across Chinese firms and identifies key determinants such as industry-specific regulatory intensity, listing status, and organizational imprinting from headquarters. The analysis employs a dual institutional framework to explain how compliance systems emerge from the interplay between host-state regulatory demands and home-state institutional legacies, producing hybrid structures that blend local adaptation with headquarters-driven replication. Findings reveal that while certain compliance features—such as committee …

The Field Of International Business Transactions Law, Kathleen Claussen

Seattle University Law Review

This Article studies the evolution of the scholarly subfield referred to as the law of “international business transactions” (IBT). It reviews data on academic articles, courses, textbooks and other signifiers of the growth of this research area. Beginning around 1960, scholars began to use the term “international business transactions” and by the 1980s, several law schools were offering a course by that title. A handful of dedicated textbooks soon followed. These data reflect a gradual increase in research on the topic of IBT, particularly in the United States, but also considerable diversity of subject matters covered by those works. The …

Global Supply Chain Resilience In Emerging Technologies: A Case Study Of Bitcoin Mining, Kishanthi Parella, Carla L. Reyes

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has put into motion bold plans in critical and emerging technologies to bolster its national and economic security.  For example, the federal government created a national bitcoin strategic reserve and a stockpile of other cryptocurrency; while several states have committed to or are considering similar goals.  However, the security of these reserves is dependent on two types of supply chains within the Bitcoin mining industry: analogue supply chains, relating to the physical components needed for Bitcoin mining, and data supply chains, relating to the complex and layered logistical network of actors that create input into the software …

Volume 49 Masthead

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 49 Masthead

Restricting Data Flows Is A Sign Of Weakness, Nikolas Guggenberger

Seattle University Law Review

There has been a seismic shift in American attitudes toward the free flow of data across borders.  In less than a decade, the United States has transitioned from condemning barriers to digital trade to constructing a digital fortress of its own. It passed legislation requiring TikTok’s parent company to divest its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban affecting 170 million U.S. users, citing national security concerns about its ties to China and the potential for data surveillance and content manipulation. Upon legal challenge by TikTok on First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court affirmed the ban’s constitutionality. Recent federal legislation …

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And American Approaches To Shaping International Outer Space Law And Norms, Ariel G. Silverman

Seattle University Law Review

This article explores convergences and divergencies in the United States and PRC’s responses to the stalemate in the United Nations over the future of outer space resource governance. I do so by systematically analyzing these leading space-faring nations’ policy-positions and tactics deployed to shape norms around three substantive areas of outer space resource governance: rights of ownership and scope of utilization of space resources, mechanization of the “benefits sharing” principle, and the rights and responsibilities of the private sector. I theorize that these leading space-faring nations have adopted divergent approaches due to their differing historical relationships with international law and …

Kim Gyeong-Seok And The Origins Of Northeast Asia’S Corporate Accountability Movement For War And Colonialism, Timothy Webster

Seattle University Law Review

For the past three decades, a transnational reparations movement has unfolded across Northeast Asia. Hundreds of victims—assisted by attorneys, academics, and activists—seek remedies from Japan for various atrocities committed during World War II, colonialism, and other historical injustices.  They press their claims in street protests, legislative hearings, dramatic performances, and other fora.  The “comfort women” are the best known of these claimants; their global redress campaign ex-tends from noisy protests outside of Japan’s embassy in Seoul, to mute statues in raucous boroughs of Berlin.  More obscure, though larger in number, were the roughly one million Koreans who performed forced labor …

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Third-Party Funding: Balancing Transparency, National Security, And Access To Justice, Victoria Shannon Sahani

Seattle University Law Review

Many lawmakers who have recently become aware of the multi-billion-dollar global third-party funding industry are raising new national security concerns that further complicate preexisting, longstanding debates about transparency, disclosure, access to justice, and the best way to regulate third-party funding. In response, this Article briefly asserts three main points relating to the question of how best to regulate third-party funding. First, this Article explains the third-party funding industry, including its global regulatory landscape and how it serves three distinct populations: consumers, businesses, and law firms. Second, this Article explains that third-party funding is one tool that can help expand access …

Resilient Dispute Resolution Systems For International Energy Conflicts, Guillermo J. Garcia Sanchez

Seattle University Law Review

Energy-related conflicts are on the rise, spanning diverse issues such as the impacts of rare mineral mining on local communities, the impacts of sanctions on energy investments due to the Russia-Ukraine war, and the impacts of expanded subsidies on the electric vehicle and solar panel industries. Increasingly, companies, communities, and governments are clashing over the challenges of pursuing disparate and sometimes competing energy policies. This Article argues that dispute resolution mechanisms in the energy investment sector must be fundamentally rethought. Traditional semi-adjudicatory models, which focus on winners and losers, fail to accommodate the complex and multifaceted nature of contemporary energy …

Product Nationality And Corporate Identity, Trang (Mae) Nguyen

Seattle University Law Review

Global supply chains have long depended on a deceptively technical device: the attribution of a “nationality” to goods. A trade law principle, rules of origin assign products an “economic passport” that governs how they are treated at the border, including what markets they may enter and which tariff rates apply. In recent years, however, product nationality has taken on a new and far more ambitious role. As U.S. trade policy increasingly intersects with national security and human rights policy, policymakers rely on nationality-based measures to police supply chain linkages, curb geopolitical issues, and discipline firms for their links to forced …

Incarcerated Youths In Canada And The United States: A Comparative Analysis, Grace A. Mastrangelo

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Are children, who commit adult crimes, deserving of adult punishments? According to the United Nations, not if it harms their well-being. Article 3 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) adopted by the United Nations in November 1989, states that 1) the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration of all state actions involving children, 2) governments must allot children the protection and care necessary for their well-being, and 3) governmental institutions, services, and facilities that deal with children must uphold adequate standards for the safety, health, and supervision of children. The CRC is …

Policy Recommendations To Reduce False Confessions By Juveniles In Wrongful Conviction Cases, Rohit R. Iyer

CMC Senior Theses

This research focuses on false confessions by juveniles in the United States justice system. False confessions are statements made by suspects during investigations in which individuals provide statements to investigators admitting to a crime in which they had no part. In these cases, individuals often spend years, if not the entirety, of their lives behind bars for crimes they did not commit. False confessions are the result of a number of systemic factors that will be discussed in this paper. While relatively rare, they are one of the largest blemishes in the U.S. justice system. Juveniles – individuals below the …

Trial By Character, Hillel J. Bavli

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

In this Article, I argue that courts regularly deviate from Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), which prohibits character evidence—evidence of a defendant’s past misdeeds offered to prove that the defendant acted in conformity with a certain character trait on the occasion in question. These deviations undermine the fairness of a trial and the presumption of innocence. The Article addresses this problem in three ways. First, it explains how courts have misinterpreted Rule 404(b)—an error that I call the permitted-purpose fallacy—and how they have fortified this misinterpretation with a body of flawed principles and precedent. Second, it reports the results of …

Computational Clinical Judgment: Predicting Risk With Large Language Models, Hannah Laqueur, Ryan W. Copus

Faculty Works

For seventy years, research has shown actuarial methods outperform clinical judgment. Yet actuarial approaches have limitations: they generally rely on structured data; cannot exploit rare case-specific details; have limited accuracy where outcome data are scarce or incomplete; and cannot offer case-level justifications. Large language models (LLMs) offer a different approach. Like actuarial methods, they aggregate information algorithmically, but like clinicians, they bring general knowledge and can provide case-level justifications. We prompted seven LLMs to assess rearrest risk from 113 parole hearing transcripts and compared their predictions to a machine learning model trained on 4,000 cases with 91 administrative variables. GPT-5 …

Out Of Sight Is Out Of Mind? Experimentally Testing A Gradually Materializing Public Bad, Alexander Egberts, Christoph Engel, Joshua Fairfield

Scholarly Articles

Many social ills can be modeled as a public bad. In such scenarios, private benefit is often immediate, while the public damage takes some time to materialize. In this experiment, we investigate the behavioral effects caused by such delays in the realization of collective harm. By manipulating the weight with which the damages caused by group contributions are carried over to the next round, we alter the number of periods required for the social damage to unfold fully. We keep constant the economic consequences of contributions between treatments (by introducing a multiplier for the damage) and between periods (by deducting …