Criminal Insanity: An Expert\u27s Report

The report was taken from the second edition of Dr. Watson\u27s book Psychiatry for Lawyers (International University Press). Originally the report was sent to counsel in a real case. Some identifying names have been changed. The defendant in the case was found not guilty by reason of insanity

A Psychohistorical View of Mr. Justice Frankfurter

A Review of The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter by H.N. Hirsc

Mid-City Law Center: Opportunity For Academic Innovation

This paper will explore some aspects of legal educaton in the context of the Norton Clapp Law Center, a new mid-city law school complex. The innovations in this Center will bring certain educational hazards, many of which are at the center of recent pedagogical discussions about law schools. This paper attempts to identify these hazards and contemplate ways to forestall them. I will not explore these issues as either a lawyer, an economist, a sociological or anthropological analyst. Rather, my observations will be those of a working psychiatric clinician who is a long-time member of a law faculty, and who is used to listening to complex troubles, trying to make rational sense of them, and then collaboratively evolving new ways to get issues back into a more satisfying and less painful adjustment

Could the Legal System be More Humane

As part of the BBC-Radio Third Program Series on the theme of What\u27s Wrong with the Law? the following lecture was broadcast in Britain in December, 1968. To explore the question of humaneness in the law presents a fine challenge to a social psychiatrist. It requires the analysis of a social institution which deals with issues of morality and authority, and which engages the intellectual and emotional involvements of lay clients with professional lawyers and judges. Every aspect of this complicated situation lends itself to psychological scrutiny

Some Psychological Aspects of the Trial Judge\u27s Decision Making

The following article is an edited, abridged version of a piece that originally appeared in Mercer Law Review: 39.3 Spring, 1988, pp. 937-960. Reprinted by permission. In 1930 judge Jerome Frank published his remarkable book Law and the Modern Mind. Frank stated that there is a central myth in law that focuses on our eternal quest for certainty. He linked this with a universal fantasy of childhood wherein infants attribute omniscience and omnipotence to their parents and expect them to know and to do everything. Much of law-making, Frank believed, is a derivative of this childhood need: all humans have great reluctance to accept the fact that life is filled with uncertainty. This paper will extend Frank\u27s exploration into some of the psychological means that judges use in their efforts to achieve this myth of certainty and to make themselves comfortable while doing so