Jennifer K. Robbennolt

Valerie P. Hans

Tort law regulates most human activities: from driving a car to using consumer products to providing or receiving medical care. Injuries caused by dog bites, slips and falls, fender benders, bridge collapses, adverse reactions to a medication, bar fights, oil spills, and more all implicate the law of torts. The rules and procedures by which tort cases are resolved engage deeply-held intuitions about justice, causation, intentionality, and the obligations that we owe to one another. Tort rules and procedures also generate significant controversy—most visibly in political debates over tort reform. The Psychology of Tort Law explores tort law through the lens of psychological science. Drawing on a wealth of psychological research and their own experiences teaching and researching tort law, Jennifer K. Robbennolt and Valerie P. Hans examine the psychological assumptions that underlie doctrinal rules. They explore how tort law influences the behavior and decision-making of potential plaintiffs and defendants, examining how doctors and patients, drivers, manufacturers and purchasers of products, property owners, and others make decisions against the backdrop of tort law. They show how the judges and jurors who decide tort claims are influenced by psychological phenomena in deciding cases. And they reveal how plaintiffs, defendants, and their attorneys resolve tort disputes in the shadow of tort law. Robbennolt and Hans here shed fascinating light on the tort system, and on the psychological dynamics which undergird its functioning.

The Psychology of Tort Law

Jean R. Sternlight

Psychology for Lawyers introduces practicing lawyers and law students to some of the key insights offered by the field of psychology. The first part of the book offers a crash course in those aspects of psychology that will be most useful to practicing attorneys, including issues such as perception, memory, judgment, decision making, emotion, influence, communication, and the psychology of justice. The second part applies the insights of research to tasks that lawyers face on a regular basis, including interviewing, negotiating, counseling, and conducting discovery. In addition, the book offers practical suggestions for improving your practice suggestions that are grounded in the science of psychology. In short, by learning more about psychology and how to apply it, lawyers will be more effective, more successful, more ethical, and even happier. Comprehensive in discussion, this guide discusses aspects of social and cognitive psychology that are most relevant to lawyering: perception, memory, judgment, decision making, emotion, influence, communication and the psychology of justice. The authors include clear writing drawing on lots of current and interesting examples, chapter summaries, and extensive endnotes and helpful bibliographies for each chapter for those readers desiring more depth on particular issues."

Jennifer K. Robbennolt

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