Law and Psychology Commons^™

Good And Bad, I Defined These Terms, Quite Clear No Doubt Somehow: Neuroimaging And Competency To Be Executed After Panetti, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

There has been little consideration, in either the caselaw or the scholarly literature, of the potential impact of neuroimaging on cases assessing whether a seriously mentally disabled death row defendant is competent to be executed. The Supreme Court's 2007 decision in Panetti v. Quarterman significantly expanded its jurisprudence by ruling that such a defendant had a constitutional right to make a showing that his mental illness "obstruct[ed] a rational understanding of the State's reason for his execution." This article considers the impact of neuroimaging testimony on post-Panetti competency determination hearings, and looks at multiple questions of admissibility of evidence, adequacy …

They Keep It All Hid: The Ghettoization Of Mental Disability Law And Its Implications For Legal Education, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The Supreme Court has, since 1972, decided more than fifty cases involving persons with mental disabilities, a docket spanning virtually every aspect of constitutional law and criminal procedure. These cases have dealt with the substantive and procedural limitations on the commitment power, the conditions of confinement in psychiatric institutions, the application of the Americans with Disabilities Act to persons institutionalized because of mental illness, the substantive and procedural aspects of the criminal incompetency inquiry and the insanity defense, the relationship between mental disability and sexually violent predator laws, and all aspects of the death penalty. Thousands of cases have been …

Moral Foundation Theory And The Law, Colin Prince

Seattle University Law Review

Moral foundation theory argues that there are five basic moral foundations: (1) harm/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. These five foundations comprise the building blocks of morality, regardless of the culture. In other words, while every society constructs its own morality, it is the varying weights that each society allots to these five universal foundations that create the variety. Haidt likens moral foundation theory to an “audio equalizer,” with each culture adjusting the sliders differently. The researchers, however, were not content to simply categorize moral foundations—they have tied the foundations to political leanings. And it is …

Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, And The Criminal Justice System, Deborah W. Denno

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Welfare As Happiness, John Bronsteen, Christopher Buccafusco, Jonathan S. Masur

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Tort Damages And The New Science Of Happiness, Rick Swedloff, Peter H. Huang

Publications

The happiness revolution is coming to legal scholarship. Based on empirical data about the how and why of positive emotions, legal scholars are beginning to suggest reforms to legal institutions. In this article we aim to redirect and slow down this revolution.

One of their first targets of these legal hedonists is the jury system for tort damages. In several recent articles, scholars have concluded that early findings about hedonic adaptation and affective forecasting undermine tort awards for pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, and other non-economic damages. In the shadow of a broader debate about …

Love As Legal Methodology: Comments On Love In A Time Of Envy, Naomi Mezey

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In academic papers about emotion, it is not uncommon to find a kind of disconnect between the detachment of theoretical and scholarly language and the subject of the paper--the emotions. One of the lovely, and challenging, aspects of Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller's article is that it not only conveys the emotions that are its subject, but it brims with its own emotion; it reads like a text written out of shattered love. Goldberg-Hiller takes up Jean-Luc Nancy's contention that "love is shattered by its very essence. It fragments the self at the same time as it refracts into many forms." Goldberg-Hiller understands …

Salvation Or A Lethal Dose? Attitudes And Advocacy In Right To Refuse Treatment Cases, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The debate surrounding the right to refuse treatment controversy continues unabated in the relevant law and social science literature. However, there are two areas where scant research attention is found. These include the attitudes of patients and staff regarding right to refuse treatment decisions and the adequacy of counsel availed to patients who assert their constitutionally protected right to refuse. This article examines both issues, mindful of what they tell us about sanism and pretextuality with respect to mental disability law and right to refuse treatment jurisprudence.

Too Stubborn To Ever Be Governed By Enforced Insanity: Some Therapeutic Jurisprudence Dilemmas In The Representation Of Criminal Defendants In Incompetency And Insanity Cases, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Little attention has been paid to the importance between therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and the role ofcriminal defense lawyers in insanity and incompetency-to-stand-trial (IST) cases. That inattention is especially noteworthy in light of the dismal track record of counsel providing services to defendants who are part of this cohort of incompetency-status-raisers and insanity-defense-pleaders. On one hand, this lack of attention is a surprise as TJ scholars have, in recent years, turned their attention to virtually every other aspect of the legal system. On the other hand, it is not a surprise, given the omnipresence of sanism, an irrational prejudice ofthe same …

Rethinking Guardianship (Again): Substituted Decision Making As A Violation Of The Integration Mandated Of Title Ii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Leslie Salzman

Articles

In every state, when an adult has a diminished capacity to make decisions about personal affairs or property management, a court may transfer the individual’s right to make decisions to a guardian. This Article argues that, in most cases, it would be preferable to support decision making rather than supplant it through guardianship, and then seeks to locate a right to receive such support as a less restrictive alternative to the substituted decision making that characterizes guardianship.

Building on the reasoning in Olmstead v. L.C. and subsequent decisions interpreting the Americans with Disabilities Act’s integration mandate, this Article argues that …

Countermeasure Mechanisms In A P300-Based Concealed Information Test, John B. Meixner Jr., J. Peter Rosenfeld

Scholarly Works

The detection of deception has been the focus of much research in the past 20 years. Though much controversy has surrounded one deception detection protocol, the “Control Question Test” (NRC 2003, Ben-Shakhar 2002), an alternative test, the Guilty Knowledge Test (GKT), developed by Lykken (1959, 1960), is based on scientific principles and has been well-received in the scientific community. The GKT presents subjects with various stimuli, one of which is a guilty knowledge item (termed the probe, such as the gun used to commit a crime). The other stimuli in the test consist of control items that are of the …

Nudge, Choice Architecture, And Libertarian Paternalism, Pierre Schlag

Publications

In Nudge, Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler describe how public and private institutions can improve on individual choices by nudging individuals into making selections that are right for them. Rejecting the Econ-101 caricature of the rational utility maximizer as inaccurate, Sunstein and Thaler apply the insights of behavioral economics to show how institutions can improve the delivery of services. Moving beyond attempts to remedy individual cognitive errors, Sunstein and Thaler also argue for "libertarian paternalism" - which they herald as the "Third Way." This Review assesses their claims critically, finding their development of "nudge" and "choice architecture" to be …

Long Lines At Polling Stations? Observations From An Election Day Field Study, Douglas M. Spencer, Zachary S. Markovits

Publications

This pilot study represents the first systematic attempt to determine how common lines are on Election Day, at what times of day lines are most likely to form, what are the bottlenecks in the voting process, and how long it takes an average citizen to cast his or her ballot. This study highlights the importance of evaluating polling station operations as a three-step process: arrival, check-in, and casting a ballot. We collected data during the 2008 presidential primary election in California, measuring the efficiency of the operational components of 30 polling stations across three counties. We found statistically significant, and …