Law and Psychology Commons^™

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: Analyzing Inhumane Practices In Mississippi’S Correctional Institutions Due To Overcrowding, Understaffing, And Diminished Funding, Ariel A. Williams

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine the political, social, and economic factors which have led to inhumane conditions in Mississippi’s correctional facilities. Several methods were employed, including a comparison of the historical and current methods of funding, staffing, and rehabilitating prisoners based on literature reviews. State-sponsored reports from various departments and the legislature were analyzed to provide insight into budgetary restrictions and political will to allocate funds. Statistical surveys and data were reviewed to determine how overcrowding and understaffing negatively affect administrative capacity and prisoners’ mental and physical well-being. Ultimately, it may be concluded that Mississippi has high …

The Aftermath Of Sexual Assault: Creating The "I Am More Than My Experience" Workbook, Isabella Chung

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The following thesis includes a literature review of the immediate and long-term effects of sexual assault on victims in regards to their physical, mental, and emotional health and romantic relationships, followed by a proposed workbook for sexual assault victims/survivors. Being that typical responses immediately after an assault are fear, disbelief, and activation of the sympathetic nervous system, it is to no surprise that long term issues of depression, anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) often arise as well. Thus, a workbook was created with the intention of educating readers about sexual assault and helping victims/survivors to heal from the trauma …

How The Level Of Job Complexity Impacts The Gender Wage Gap Across Occupations, Zytlaly Magaña Corona

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The present study focused on unpacking the social and structural aspects of job complexity to better understand its effects on the gender wage gap. Previous research on the job complexity-compensation dynamic has primarily focused on cognitive complexity. Job complexity across occupations were examined using work activity data from O*NET and merging it with the Current Population Survey data sponsored by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (N=67,003). Results revealed that higher complexity jobs in this study yielded greater wage disparities across different occupations as predicted. Furthermore, physical activities and gaining knowledge from the Generalized Work Activities were the two most …

The Search For Truth: Legal Storytelling From The Psychological Perspective, Chloe Graves

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explored the roles of trust, bias, and narrative in legal storytelling and made suggestions for improving legal storytelling and avoiding bias and mistrust when telling and analyzing legal stories. This study was a background and literature review and synthesis of the role of narrative, trust and bias in both general and legal presentation. The current thesis integrated many diverse sources to create an overview of the development of these psychological aspects in the legal field and in legal presentation. The most relevant studies to the legal field and legal presentation were included for integration and synthesis. From the …

Modify State “Piracy” After Allen: Introducing Apology To The U.S. Copyright Regime, Runhua Wang

Buffalo Law Review

Copyright protection from state offenders is onerous because of the imbalanced bargaining power between states and authors, which is increased by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Allen v. Cooper. This decision clarifies that state sovereign immunity is not abrogated by the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990 (“CRCA”). It secures states’ constitutional rights, the public interest, and the efficiency of copyright infringement litigations against states. However, a paradox of this decision is that it may harm innovation incentives or spirits of creativity due to the increased imbalanced bargaining power to prevent authors from being repaired for their economic or …

The Insights, Uses, And Ethics Of Social Neuroscience In Anti-Discrimination Law, Susan Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The article explores the uses in anti-discrimination law of social neuroscience—a broad interdisciplinary field that draws on the insights of brain science, medicine, epidemiology, social psychology, behavioral economics, moral cognitive neuroscience and many other experimentally based disciplines. It discusses the promising uses of social neuroscience findings from all these subfields on such matters as the irrational biases of “fast” thinking processes in general, and implicit biases against “out” groups more specifically, as well as group conformity, the black sheep effect, and more. The article traces a few of the ways these insights can help inform anti-discrimination law in both particular …

Precise Punishment: Why Precise Punitive Damage Requests Result In Higher Awards Than Round Requests, Michael Conklin

Michigan Business & Entrepreneurial Law Review

Imagine a setting where someone asks two people what the temperature is outside. The first person says it is 80 °F, while the second person says it is 78.7 °F. Research regarding precise versus round cognitive anchoring suggests that the second person is more likely to be believed. This is because it is human nature to assume that if someone gives a precise answer, he must have good reason for doing so. This principle remains constant in a variety of settings, including used car negotiations, eBay transactions, and estimating the field goal percentage of a basketball player.

This Article reports …

The "Innocence" Of Bias, Osamudia James

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudices that Shapes What We See, Think, and Do. by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.

Blurred Lines: How To Rationally Understand The “Rational Understanding” Doctrine After Madison V. Alabama, Cassidy Young

Pepperdine Law Review

In Madison v. Alabama, the Supreme Court held that a capital inmate’s inability to remember his crime did not render him incompetent to be executed. The Court reasoned that an individual who suffers from episodic memory loss may still “rationally understand” society’s reasons for sentencing him to death for a crime he once committed. This Note explores the impact of memory loss on a person’s self-identity, and consequently challenges the notion that a capital inmate who no longer remembers his crime can truly have a rational understanding of it. Specifically, this Note examines how memory loss substantially weakens the two …

Expanding Therapeutic Jurisprudence Across The Federal Judiciary, Benjamin Barsky, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Dominic Sisti

Articles & Chapters

A patchwork of drug courts and other problem-solving courts currently exists to divert individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders away from the criminal justice system. We call for a broader implementation of problem-solving courts, particularly at the federal level, that would operate according to the principles of therapeutic jurisprudence (i.e., a framework that aims to maximize the health benefits of judicial and legislative policies and practices). Expanding federal problem-solving courts will better serve individuals with mental illness and substance use disorders in the federal criminal justice system and allow them to benefit from rehabilitation and diversion programs. This …

The Role Of Perceived Warmth And Competence In Civil Trials With Corporate Litigants, Alexander C. Jay

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Corporations are involved in approximately 40% of all civil litigation (Langton & Cohen, 2008), yet there is much to be learned concerning how jurors make decisions in trials involving corporate litigants. Mock juror research suggests that for-profit corporations are treated more harshly than other defendants, such as non-profit corporations and individuals (e.g., Hans, 1998). This discrepant treatment of for-profit corporate defendants might be linked to unmitigated stereotypical perceptions of them being low in warmth (i.e., likely to have immoral intentions) but high in competence (i.e., likely to be capable of acting on those intentions; Aaker et al., 2010). Research shows …

Collared—A Film Case Study About Insider Trading And Ethics, Garrick Apollon

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article discusses the visual legal advocacy documentary film, Collared, by Garrick Apollon (author of this Article). Collared premiered in fall 2018 to a sold-out audience at the Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto for the Hot Docs for Continuing Professional Education edutainment initiative. Collared features the story and reveals the testimony of a convicted ex-insider trader who is still struggling with the tragic consequences of “the most prolonged insider trading scheme ever discovered by American and Canadian securities investigators.” The intimate insights shared by former lawyer and reformed white-collar criminal, Joseph Grmovsek, serves as a painful reminder of the …

Punishing The Victim: Model Rule 1.16(A)(2) And Its Relation To Lawyers With Anxiety, Depression, And Bipolar Disorder, Daniel G. Esquivel

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Abstract forthcoming.

When Mental Health Meets “The One-Armed Man” Defense: How Courts Should Deal With Mccoy Defendants, Farid Seyyedi

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The Supreme Court’s opinion in McCoy v. Louisiana held that a defendant has a constitutional right to insist their attorney not concede guilt as to any element of an offense, even if doing so is the only reasonable trial strategy to give the defendant a chance at life imprisonment instead of the death penalty. Under McCoy’s holding, a defendant can insist on maintaining their innocence—even in the face of overwhelming evidence—and force their attorney to pursue a defense that will land them on death row. The Supreme Court’s holding makes clear that a strategic concession of guilt at trial—over …

“Champion Man-Hater Of All Time”: Feminism, Insanity, And Property Rights In 1940s America, Magdalene Zier

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

Legions of law students in property or trusts and estates courses have studied the will dispute, In re Strittmater’s Estate. The cases, casebooks, and treatises that cite Strittmater present the 1947 decision from New Jersey’s highest court as a model of the “insane delusion” doctrine. Readers learn that snubbed relatives successfully invalidated Louisa Strittmater’s will, which left her estate to the Equal Rights Amendment campaign, by convincing the court that her radical views on gender equality amounted to insanity and, thus, testamentary incapacity. By failing to provide any commentary or context on this overt sexism, these sources affirm the …

Cgi Social Media Influencers: Are They Above The Ftc’S Influence?, Kelly Callahan

Journal of Business & Technology Law

No abstract provided.

The Participation Principle And The Dialectic Of Sovereignty-Sharing, George K. Foster

Seattle University Law Review

States around the world are ceding authority to international institutions, devolving powers to lower-level political subdivisions, and granting forms of autonomy to Indigenous peoples and other minority groups. At the same time, states are increasingly offering groups and individuals “participation rights”: opportunities to participate in sovereign prerogatives without exercising control. These opportunities range from providing input into environmental decision-making, to collaborating with law enforcement in community policing programs, to receiving a share of natural-resource revenues. This Article contends that all of these developments represent a dividing up of the collection of rights known as sovereignty, and that participation rights reflect …

Duress In Immigration Law, Elizabeth A. Keyes

Seattle University Law Review

The doctrine of duress is common to other bodies of law, but the application of the duress doctrine is both unclear and highly unstable in immigration law. Outside of immigration law, a person who commits a criminal act out of well-placed fear of terrible consequences is different than a person who willingly commits a crime, but American immigration law does not recognize this difference. The lack of clarity leads to certain absurd results and demands reimagining, redefinition, and an unequivocal statement of the significance of duress in ascertaining culpability. While there are inevitably some difficult lines to be drawn in …

“Born Under My Heart”: Adoptive Parents’ Use Of Metaphors To Make Sense Of Their Past, Present, And Future, Lucas Hackenburg, Toni Morgan, Eve Brank

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

Metaphors provide the opportunity to make sense of our experiences and share them with others. The current research qualitatively examined interviews with adoptive parents who had adopted through intercountry or private adoptions. Throughout their interviews, each participant used at least one metaphor in describing their experiences of adopting and raising their child. Overarchingly, the metaphor of “Adoption is a journey” encapsulated parents’ experiences. To demonstrate the journey, parents used metaphors to describe the past, present, and future. Metaphors of the past focused on their child’s trauma and the origin of how the child came to join their family. Metaphors used …

Talking Back In Court, M. Eve Hanan

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.