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Undergraduate Education in Law and Psychology
Book chapter

Undergraduate Education in Law and Psychology

Edie Greene and Kirk Heilbrun
The Witness Stand and Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Jr, pp 153-170
01 Jan 2015
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2077-8_10

Abstract

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Larry Wrightsman’s textbook, Psychology and the Legal System, is the longest-lived, best-selling, and arguably most influential text read by students in law and psychology courses across the country. This chapter focuses on Larry Wrightsman’s considerable contributions to undergraduate education in law and psychology. With subsequent editions of his text, we have the uncanny ability to trace the growth in the field throughout the years and take note of the changes that have occurred through Wrightsman’s eyes. It is important to describe the organizing framework featured in every edition of Psychology and the Legal System, namely the broad psychological and philosophical issues that Wrightsman termed “dilemmas” at the intersection of the two fields—and we drill down on two of them: rights of individuals versus the common good, and equality versus discretion. The chapter illustrates the evolution of these two themes and provides exemplars from various editions of the textbook. In particular, the chapter comments on the psychological science, case law, and legal policies relevant to those issues. One of the objectives is to use Wrightsman’s significant contribution as a vehicle for examining ongoing and vibrant debates in the field of psychology and law. Another is to illustrate how the two disciplines have independently and jointly examined topics of broad societal concern and provided complementary perspectives on their resolution.

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