Law and Psychology Commons^™

Authority, Obedience, And Justification, Michelle Madden Dempsey

University of Cincinnati Law Review

We have a duty to think for ourselves. The law claims authority over us. We have a duty, at least sometimes, to obey the law. Alone, each of these premises is fairly uncontroversial. Combined, they create some intriguing puzzles. Can law’s claim of authority be justified? If so, does justified legal authority entail an obligation to obey the law? If not, are we nonetheless justified, and perhaps even obligated, to act as if such an obligation exists? While this essay is hardly the first to address these questions, it is the first to do so by combining elements of Joseph …

Prosecuting The Phone Scammer When Extradition Fails And Concurrent Jurisdiction Exists, Michelle Lepkofker

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Advancements in technology allow people to place phone calls half a world away via the internet. This technology has made it easier and cheaper for consumers to communicate, but it has also made it easier for scammers to reach more unsuspecting victims. In 2020, TrueCaller, an app designed to block scam phone calls, successfully blocked, and identified 31.3 billion spam calls in 20 countries. In the same year, Americans alone lost a total of USD $ 29.8 billion to scam calls. This Note argues that phone scams continue to be lucrative, in part, because criminal prosecutions of transnational crimes are …

Ineffective Counsel In Death Penalty Cases And The Promise Of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Michael L. Perlin, J.D.

Articles & Chapters

It is absolutely essential to consider the abject ineffectiveness of counsel in a significant number of death penalty cases involving defendants with serious mental disabilities and how such ineffectiveness is often (scandalously) accepted by reviewing courts. We must also assess all of the concerns raised in this excellent paper by Hiromoto and colleagues through the filter of therapeutic jurisprudence as a way to guide counsel to thoroughly investigate all aspects of such cases (especially those involving defendants with PTSD) and to present substantial mitigating evidence to the fact finders in the sorts of cases the authors are discussing.

The Dangers Of Doxing And Swatting: Why Texas Should Criminalize These Malicious Forms Of Cyberharassment, Hannah Mery

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming.

Emotions And Intellectual Property Law, Margaret Chon

Akron Law Review

Emotions constitute an integral part of the diverse approaches that we bring to bear upon our most pressing law and policy issues. This article explores the role of emotions in intellectual property, information, and technology law (IP). Like other areas of law, IP commits to, prioritizes, and even honors, reason, logic, and facts—which can result in the sidelining of the affective components of law. Yet our affective responses to legal and other phenomena influence both cognition and reason. Part I of the article provides a general overview of the field of law and emotions, pointing out how this approach to …

Advancing Behavioral Health Literacy, James Scollione

Journal of Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences

Accessing, comprehending, and using information to make informed decisions and improve one’s overall health or well-being are the foci of health literacy. The concept of behavioral health was introduced in the early 1980s and, since then, it has influenced new ideas (e.g., behavioral health literacy and integrated behavioral health care) and gained research and public attention. My aim is to provide an overview of definitions (i.e., health literacy, mental health literacy, and behavioral health literacy) and their connection to each other. I propose an expanded and honed definition of behavioral health literacy to enhance the behavioral health literacy and well-being …

Biographical Data And Black Box Empiricism: Lessons Learned For Algorithmic Assessments In Personnel Selection, Ketaki Sodhi, Marc Cubrich

Psychology from the Margins

As the popularity of biodata in selection assessments grew in the 1980s and into the 1990s, the field of industrial and organizational psychology witnessed many attempts to develop biodata theories and guide the development of biodata items. The insights that emerged from this body of research are increasingly relevant in the current era of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning. More than ever, AI and machine learning are being used to score candidates and make hiring recommendations. Many organizations are using data-driven approaches to develop machine learning and AI algorithms, which are frequently atheoretical, based on correlations or …

Barred By Their Brains: Inmates With Traumatic Brain Injury (Tbi), Claire Mikita

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

"My Bewildering Brain Toils In Vain": Traumatic Brain Injury, The Criminal Trial Process, And The Case Of Lisa Montgomery, Alison Lynch, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo

Articles & Chapters

Individuals with traumatic brain injuries (TBI) have a greater risk of becoming justice-involved due to the role that many TBIs play in impulse control and judgment. Attorneys assigned to represent this cohort may not have encountered individuals with TBI before, and may not be familiar with behavioral manifestations that could be relevant as a defense or as mitigation in individual cases. In this regard, TBI is grossly misunderstood.

A grave example of this point, and a foundation for this article, is the case of Lisa Montgomery, who despite evidence of serious mental illness and significant brain damage, was convicted, sentenced …

Contract Schemas, Roseanna Sommers

Articles

This review draws on the notion of “contract schemas” to characterize what ordinary people think is happening when they enter into contractual arrangements. It proposes that contracts are schematically represented as written documents filled with impenetrable text containing hidden strings, which are routinely signed without comprehension. This cognitive template, activated whenever people encounter objects with these characteristic features, confers certain default assumptions, associations, and expectancies. A review of the literature suggests that contract schemas supply (a) the assumption that terms will be enforced as written, (b) the feeling that one is obligated to perform, and (c) the sense that one …

Replicability In Empirical Legal Research, Jason M. Chin, Kathryn Zeiler

Faculty Scholarship

As part of a broader methodological reform movement, scientists are increasingly interested in improving the replicability of their research. Replicability allows others to perform replications to explore potential errors and statistical issues that might call the original results into question. Little attention, however, has been paid to the state of replicability in the field of empirical legal research (ELR). Quality is especially important in this field because empirical legal researchers produce work that is regularly relied upon by courts and other legal bodies. In this review article, we summarize the current state of ELR relative to the broader movement towards …

Mechanical Turk Jurisprudence, Shlomo Klapper

Brooklyn Law Review

This paper argues that data-driven interpretation creates a “Mechanical Turk” jurisprudence: a jurisprudence that appears mechanical but in fact is thoroughly human. Its contribution to the literature is twofold. First, it articulates an intellectual history of data-driven interpretation: data-driven tools have been adopted because society associates quantification with a mechanical objectivity and because objectivity is at the center of debates over statutory interpretation. Second, it criticizes surveys as an interpretative tool: in addition to a host of practical execution problems, surveys misunderstand the concept of “ordinary meaning” and threaten to undermine the value of faithful agency.

Why Proving A Work-Related, Psychological Injury Claim Stresses You Out, Melissa Lin Jones

Journal of the National Association of Administrative Law Judiciary

In recognition of the humanitarian purpose of the District of Columbia Workers’ Compensation Act of 1979, D.C. Code as amended, §32-1501 et seq. and the legislative policy favoring awards even in arguable cases, a claimant is entitled to a presumption of compensability (“Presumption”) when applying for workers’ compensation benefits. By establishing a causal connection between the injured worker’s disability and a work-related event, the Presumption enables a claimant to establish entitlement to benefits more easily; however, misapplication of the Presumption makes it more difficult for claimants to prove work-related psychological injuries because they must satisfy additional requirements (including a credibility …

The Influence Of Prosecutorial Overcharging On Defendant And Defense Attorney Plea Decision Making: Documenting And Debiasing The Anchoring Effect, Stephanie Aurora Cardenas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Strategic overcharging, a practice that some prosecutors readily employ to threaten defendants with excessively severe sentences, undermines the Sixth Amendment right to trial by coercing defendants to plead guilty rather than face penalties disproportionate to their alleged misconduct. Legal scholars and psychologists have long suggested that strategic overcharging may elicit powerful anchoring effects that bias defendants’, but not attorneys’ evaluations, of the plea offer. The current research sought to examine (a) the extent to which mock defendants and legal professionals were susceptible to the anchoring bias, (b) elucidate the mechanism underlying susceptibility to the anchoring effect in plea contexts, and …

The Psychological Allure Of Alford: Why Innocents Plead Guilty, Johanna Hellgren

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Alford plea allows defendants to maintain their innocence while accepting a plea. Although this plea is more prevalent than jury trials, it is largely unknown to both lay people and researchers (Redlich & Özdoğru, 2009). Legal scholars have argued that the Alford plea may present an undue influence on innocent defendants who may not otherwise accept a plea, while other assert that the Alford plea is a beneficial alternative for defendants who want to preserve their reputation (Ronis, 2009; Ward, 2004). However, no research to date has explored either of these assumptions.

The goals of the current research were …

The Online Impossible Anagram Task: Development And Testing Of A Novel Online Cheating Paradigm, Emily Joseph

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

For the past fifteen years, the Russano et al. (2005) cheating paradigm has dominated research in the forensic psychological literature. While this paradigm successfully activates theoretical mechanisms for ethical decision-making, applying the methods for online data collection is cumbersome and retains a confound inherent in the design. Alternative cheating paradigms from both the psychology and economics literatures were evaluated for their suitability for an online cheating paradigm. The impossible anagram task was selected as most likely to elicit the same internal and external cost-benefit analyses online as the Russano et al. (2005) cheating paradigm does in-person: self-concept maintenance, ethical dissonance, …

Death By Police: When “Protecting And Serving” Goes Wrong, Hesper Mallis

Symposium of Student Scholars

The recent cases of law enforcement using lethal force in the United States have gained massive public attention. My dataset is from the Mapping Police Violence website. The website’s focus was to create a heat map to display where police killings occurred most frequently. The website has a dataset with information on 7,664 deaths of suspects. The variables in the dataset include age, sex and race of the suspect; geographic location; alleged threat level; alleged weapon; cause of death; and criminal charges against the officer. In addition, the variables include whether the individual had a mental illness, was armed or …

Avoiding The Question: The Court's Decision To Leave The Insanity Defense In State Hands In Kahler V. Kansas, Elissa Crowder

Pepperdine Law Review

This Note will further investigate how the Court reached the correct holding that Kansas's statute does not violate the Due Process Clause. Part II gives historical background of the evolution of the insanity defense and its varied application. Part III recounts Kahler's story and the procedural history leading up to this opinion. Part IV analyzes how the majority reached its conclusion and the counterarguments presented by the dissent. Part V concludes by acknowledging this case will add to state freedom in formulating insanity defenses, but that its actual impact is uncertain because the Court avoided answering whether states can eliminate …

Autonomy And The Folk Concept Of Valid Consent, Joanna Demaree-Cotton, Roseanna Sommers

Law & Economics Working Papers

Consent governs innumerable everyday social interactions, including sex, medical exams, the use of property, and economic transactions. Yet little is known about how ordinary people reason about the validity of consent. Across the domains of sex, medicine, and police entry, Study 1 showed that when agents lack autonomous decision-making capacities, participants are less likely to view their consent as valid; however, failing to exercise this capacity and deciding in a nonautonomous way did not reduce consent judgments. Study 2 found that specific and concrete incapacities reduced judgments of valid consent, but failing to exercise these specific capacities did not, even …

Parental Plea Bargain Recommendations To Their Child In A Juvenile Court Setting, Aliya J. Birnbaum

Student Theses

This study examined parent acquiescence to attorney recommendations pertaining to plea bargain decisions, as well as whether this differed based on the racial similarity between an attorney and their juvenile client’s parent. Past research has shown that youth are vulnerable to the influence of perceived authority figures in a plea-bargain setting, leading them to rely heavily on the input of their parents and attorneys for how to plead. This study expands the literature to include how attorney race impacts parents’ plea decisions. A sample of parents of youth aged 11- 17 read a vignette, in which attorney race was manipulated, …