Journal article
Legal Academic Backlash: The Response of Legal Theorists to Situationist Insights
Emory law journal, Vol.57(5), p1087
15 Sep 2008
Abstract
Implicit in all realms of law and explicit in most legal theories is a vision of the human animal. The law, which is largely focused on influencing human behavior in one way or another, is built on assumptions about what moves and motivates people. And every attempt to assess culpability requires attributions of causation, responsibility, and blame across all relevant actors. Those theories of human action, although generally based on nothing more than intuition or common sense, are nonetheless presumed to be accurate.
Often, however, they are not. Social psychology, social cognition, and mind sciences have devoted themselves to testing and refining theories of human behavior and have demonstrated that the conceptions embraced by laypeople and the law are not only flawed, but upside down. The factors that we imagine are significant determinants of behavior usually are not, and we disregard or fail even to see many of the most influential factors.
Several articles have examined the nature of the gap between what the law and most legal theories assume moves human beings and what actually moves them. This Article, which is one in a series of pieces described in the paragraphs that follow, takes up a different but related question: Why and how is that gap maintained?
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Details
- Title
- Legal Academic Backlash: The Response of Legal Theorists to Situationist Insights
- Creators
- Adam BenforadoJon Hanson
- Publication Details
- Emory law journal, Vol.57(5), p1087
- Publisher
- Emory University, School of Law
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Thomas R. Kline School of Law
- Identifiers
- 991020202348304721