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Abstract:
In a democratic society, law is an important means to express, manipulate, and enforce moral codes. Demonstrating empirically that law can achieve moral goals is difficult. Nevertheless, public interest groups spend considerable energy and resources to change the law with the goal of changing not only morally-laden behaviors, but also morally-laden cognitions and emotions. Additionally, even when there is little reason to believe that a change in law will lead to changes in behavior or attitudes, groups see the law as a form of moral capital that they wish to own, to make a statement about society. Examples include gay sodomy laws, abortion laws, and Prohibition. In this Chapter, we explore the possible mechanisms by which law can influence attitudes and behavior. To this end, we consider informational and group influence of law on attitudes, as well as the effects of salience, coordination, and social meaning on behavior, and the behavioral backlash that can result from a mismatch between law and community attitudes. Finally, we describe two lines of psychological research - symbolic politics and group identity - that can help explain how people use the law, or the legal system, to effect expressive goals.

expressive law, psychology, morality, social meaning, compliance, flouting

Abstract:
Why should people ever be satisfied when a third party punishes in their name, as opposed to having the opportunity to exact revenge personally? When theories of delegated revenge are offered at all, they explain why a well-ordered society needs centralized punishment as a matter of practicality. But this doesn't adequately explain why they actually the public actually prefers it, and why they accept some forms of delegated agents more than others. Moreover, these theories do not have a good explanation for why or when delegated revenge will fail to satisfy victims, nor when the state will indulge this preference, as it often does. In this article, I offer a novel explanation for the phenomenon of delegated revenge. Namely, I argue that victims regard punishment as an important device for restoring the losses to their self-worth and social status they suffered as a direct result of their victimization. This approach not only explains why victims delegate their revenge, but also predicts when they won't. Finally, I use this theory to propose ways we can reestablish the government's monopoly on punishment when individuals or even whole communities balk at notion of the state as an appropriate agent of their revenge.

psychology, crime, punishment, retribution, revenge, economics

Abstract:
Confessions have historically been the most compelling evidence the state could offer at a criminal trial. However, improvements in forensic technologies have led to increased use of scientific evidence, such as DNA typing, videotapes, pattern-recognition software, location tracking devices, and the like, with very impressive rates of reliability. The reliability of these methods has become so impressive, in fact, that it far outstrips confessions. This should lead to a reduced reliance on confessions (and other nonscientific evidence, such as eyewitness identifications) over time. However, this does not mean that the doctrine of self-incrimination, which regulates the acquisition and use of confessions, will no longer be relevant. The same anxieties that animated the need for a doctrine limiting and regulating confessions, should now dictate and define the development of a rich-and complicated-doctrine for limiting and regulating the very evidence that replaces them: scientific evidence. This process (of first, the replacement of confessions with scientific evidence, and second, the development of a doctrine for scientific evidence that aims to protect the same values which self-incrimination doctrine protects), while still in its infancy, has already begun.

confessions, self-incrimination, eyewitness, forensic evidence, scientific evidence, legal theory

Abstract:
Historically, the Supreme Court has offered two justifications for the Exclusionary Rule: one, it protects the integrity of the judicial system, and two, it deters illegal searches by the police. The former justification has mostly fallen out of favor; for the past four decades decisions have turned on whether or not applying the Rule in various situations would, in fact, deter. As such, most empirical studies about the Rule have focused on whether or not in practice aggressive use of it does or does not lead to fewer police searches (illegal or otherwise), or to fewer convictions. In this study, I take a different approach, assessing support for the two competing justifications for the Rule. In two experiments, I show that people endorse the integrity justification, and fail to find much support at all for the deterrence justification. This finding is important given that the Rule is not a constitutionally-mandated remedy for illegal searches. As such, it can be ignored to the extent that (a) it does not achieve its goals and (b) undermines the perceived legitimacy of the courts by the public. If this is so, then the Court needs to be right about what those goals are, and whether or not its current jurisprudence toward the Rule does in fact enhance legitimacy. I conclude by arguing that reinvigorating the integrity justification would serve the ends of the Rule better than current doctrine does.

Abstract:
Consequentialists believe punishment can only be justified to the extent that it serves a particular goal - generally of reducing wrongdoing. Retributivists believe that punishment serves as an end (and a good) in itself, by 'answering' wrongdoing and giving a voice to society's norms and moral edicts. This Article aims to demonstrate, however, that dividing up the world of punishment theory in this way is not especially useful. By laying out the underlying assumptions of these theories (something infrequently done), we reveal not only several surprising and fundamental similarities, but we also make clear that the most important differences between the two theories rest on particular understandings of what the harms of crime actually are, and whether given punishments address them.

Once people specify which harms are in dispute in a particular policy debate, speaking in terms of consequentialist and retributivist theories adds little, if anything, to the discussion. In fact, it tends to obscure the real issues in contest, and makes it more difficult to see which punishment policies will best redress the harms of crime. To improve both clarity of the discussion and the effectiveness of ultimate solutions, we argue that punishment policy debates should bypass the punishment philosophy stage altogether, and focus directly on contested views about harms. Using philosophical and empirical findings, we describe what this sort of debate would look like both in the abstract and through concrete examples.

crime, punishment, psychology, philosophy

Abstract:
This book review-essay of Solan & Tiersma's SPEAKING OF CRIME argues that with the advent of new technologies such as improvements in DNA identification, fMRI 'lie detector' tests, and the like, courts will rely less and less on confessions altogether, rendering obsolete much of the doctrine that currently surrounds linguistic interpretation (and other markers) of consent and coercion.

confessions, self-incrimination, linguistics, scientific evidence, forensic evidence

Abstract:
This chapter argues that principles of justice explain how citizens interact with social institutions (especially political and legal ones). The chapter summarizes the research on the origins of intuitions of justice, and describes what happens when the social institutions do and do not reflect these intuitions.