Punishing Collective Entities

This Article argues that, while the legal world treats corporate entities as people for legal purposes, this legal framing does not fit well with na\u27ve models of assessing responsibility and blame. These difficulties raise questions about the value of treating entities as people for legal purposes just at a time when the United States Supreme Court seems to be moving actively to increase this entity as a person legal metaphor. The Article first reviews the literature on the psychology of responsibility and then presents both survey and experimental data that compares reactions to individual and organizational level wrongdoing. We argue that the data suggests that people have greater trouble holding entities responsible for wrongdoing and punishing them than they do making judgments of responsibility and endorsing punitive actions for individuals. In an era of corporate scandal and wrongdoing, this difficulty points to a problem within the law–the process of punishing corporate misconduct is more problematic than the process of punishing individual misconduct

The Consequences of Being an Object of Suspicion: Potential Pitfalls of Proactive Police Contact

During the latter half of the 20th century U.S. policing became more professional (Skogan &amp; Frydl 2004) and the rate of violent crime declined dramatically (Blumstein &amp; Wallman ). Yet public trust and confidence in the police increased at best marginally and there has been a large and continuing racial gap in police legitimacy. This article reviews changes in police policy and practice to explore the reasons for this seeming paradox. It is argued that a new model of proactive police stops has increased both the frequency and the range of police contact with people in the community. Such police contact does not inherently undermine public trust in the police, but the style of such contact, which involves the police communicating suspicion of ongoing or future criminal conduct and seeking to prevent it via the threat or use of coercion, has not increased trust. This article examines how such policies developed and why they are problematic. The result of a survey of Americans shows that perceived suspicion damages the social bonds between the police and the community and undermines trust in the police. The article concludes by arguing that police contact need not be inherently negative and contact during which the police use fair procedures can addresses issues of crime and disorder while building trust and confidence.</jats:p

Legitimacy and Online Proceedings: Procedural Justice, Access to Justice, and the Role of Income

Courts have long struggled to bridge the access-to-justice gap associated with in-person hearings, which makes the recent adoption of online legal proceedings potentially beneficial. Online proceedings hold promise for better access: they occur remotely, can proceed asynchronously, and often rely solely on written communication. Yet these very qualities may also undermine some of the well-established elements of procedural-justice perceptions, a primary predictor of how people view the legal system’s legitimacy. This paper examines the implications of shifting legal proceedings online for both procedural-justice and access-to-justice perceptions. It also investigates the relationship of both types of perceptions with system legitimacy, as well as the relative weight these predictors carry across litigant income levels. Drawing on online traffic court cases, we find that perceptions of procedural justice and access to justice are each separately associated with a litigant’s appraisal of system legitimacy, but among lower-income parties, access to justice is a stronger predictor, while procedural justice dominates among higher-income parties. These findings highlight the need to incorporate access-to-justice perceptions into existing models of legal legitimacy

Rooting for the top dog: How social dominance motives shape group preference in intergroup competition

Moving beyond prior research establishing people’s preference for underdogs, we examined the role of social dominance orientation (SDO) in shaping individuals’ preference for underdogs versus top dogs in intergroup competitions. Because a victorious underdog can be seen as a threat to hierarchy, we predicted that SDO would be negatively associated with underdog support. In the context of two real-world group competitions—i.e., the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games—we found that SDO was positively associated with a greater preference for top dogs rather than underdogs (Study 1 - 3). This SDO effect on group preference was mediated by beliefs about international sports competitions as opportunities for hierarchy maintenance versus equality promotion (Study 2). Furthermore, SDO and top dog preference were positively associated regardless of the hierarchy domain—i.e., countries’ economic power versus athletic achievement (Study 3). We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for intergroup research

The Psychology of Corporate Rights

Relying on the corporate personhood doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has increasingly expanded the scope of rights granted to corporations and other forms of collective entities. While this trend has received widespread attention in legal scholarship an