Description
Book SynopsisIdentifies and evaluates the psychological choices implicit in the rules of evidenceEvidence law is meant to facilitate trials that are fair, accurate, and efficient, and that encourage and protect important societal values and relationships. In pursuit of these often-conflicting goals, common law judges and modern drafting committees have had to perform as amateur applied psychologists. Their task has required them to employ what they think they know about the ability and motivations of witnesses to perceive, store, and retrieve information; about the effects of the litigation process on testimony and other evidence; and about our capacity to comprehend and evaluate evidence. These are the same phenomena that cognitive and social psychologists systematically study. The rules of evidence have evolved to restrain lawyers from using the most robust weapons of influence, and to direct judges to exclude certain categories of information, limit it, or instruct juries on how to think about
Trade ReviewIn this book, two of the worlds most knowledgeable experts on psychology and law show that the legal rules of evidence are based largely on conjectures about how people think about evidence. Saks and Spellman persuasively demonstrate that some of those conjectures are well-founded, some not, and some are completely at odds with the scientific literature. Who knew? -- Jonathan J. Koehler,Beatrice Kuhn Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
Michael J. Saks and Barbara A. Spellman have succeeded brilliantly in doing what too few have attempted and many fewer still have accomplished. This book casts a bright light onto the dusty suppositions of evidence doctrine and employs contemporary psychological science to take the measure of the modern rules. Elegantly written and comprehensive in scope, Saks and Spellmans work establishes a new standard for interdisciplinary scholarship. -- David L. Faigman,John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law, University of California, Hastings
Anyone seeking a treasure trove of new ideas will come away motivated, as the authors admirably achieve their noble goal of bringing attention to the need for more psychological research related to the Rules. * PsycCRITIQUES *
