In defense of weird hypotheticals

Lack of criminal responsibility due to “legal insanity” is probably one of the most misunderstood concepts in the criminal legal system.  Contrary to...

Detailed descriptions of violent postictal episodes are rare. We provide evidence from an index case and from a systematic review of violent postictal...

Our perceptions of what we owe each other turn somewhat on whether we consider “another” to be “an other”—a stranger and not a friend. In this essay...

Memory issues are well-known in legal trials that involve the reliability of eyewitnesses in criminal cases. However, the relevance of memory to law...

Professor Elizabeth Scott, the chief reporter of the American Law Institute’s (ALI) Restatement of Children and the Law, has often observed that the...

Evidence law controls what information will be admissible in court and when, how, and by whom it may be presented. It shapes not only the trial...

Differences in employee evaluations due to gender bias may be small in any given rating cycle, but these small differences may accumulate to produce...

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Justice Thomas’s majority opinion announced that the key to applying originalist methodology...

Forensic evidence has become a common tool in police investigations and a familiar form of evidence at trial. Forensic scientists are trained to...

Scott Lilienfeld warned that psychology’s ideological uniformity would lead to premature closure on sensitive topics. He encouraged psychologists to...

We examined how the presentation of risk assessment results and the race of the person charged affected pretrial court actors’ recommendations to...

Given that no two acts, events, situations, and legal cases are identical, precedential constraint necessarily involves determining which two...

The practice of assessing and adjudicating competence for criminal adjudication in the United States developed largely without assistance from the U.S...

Gun-related violence and suicide in the United States are serious public health problems that are concentrated among young adults, especially those...

Although risk assessment tools have been widely used to inform sentencing decisions, there is uncertainty about the extent and quality of evidence of...

Pretrial risk assessment instruments are used in many jurisdictions to inform decisions regarding pretrial release and conditions. Many are concerned...

Until social psychology devotes as much attention to construct and external validity as it does to internal validity, the field will continue to...

The five articles in this special issue of FSI:Synergy were created to advance the understanding and adoption of insights from cognitive psychology...