Identifies and evaluates the psychological choices implicit in the
rules of evidence
Evidence 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 it. Evidence law regulates the form of questions lawyers
may ask, filters expert testimony, requires witnesses to take oaths, and
aims to give lawyers and factfinders the tools they need to assess
witnesses' reliability. But without a thorough grounding in psychology,
is the "common sense" of the rulemakers as they create these rules
always, or even usually, correct? And when it is not, how can the rules
be fixed?
Addressed to those in both law and psychology, The Psychological
Foundations of Evidence Law draws on the best current psychological
research-based knowledge to identify and evaluate the choices implicit
in the rules of evidence, and to suggest alternatives that psychology
reveals as better for accomplishing the law's goals.
