No description available.

Juveniles' right to be competent to stand trial has been increasingly recognized since In re Gault (1967) granted juveniles essential due process rights. One formulation of competence proposes two facets: competence to assist counsel (e.g., understanding the roles of legal actors, the adversarial system,) and decisional competence (Bonnie, 1992). The first goal of this project was to investigate the psychometric properties and relevant correlates of one instrument to assess competence to assist counsel, the Competence Assessment for Standing Trial for Defendants with Mental Retardation (CAST-MR; this study used only the first two scales). Results indicated acceptable internal consistency, although concerns were raised regarding the appropriateness of some items. Scores were related to age and intelligence, as in prior research. No relationship was found with most mental health scale scores, prior legal system involvement, contact with defense counsel, or learning problems. The second goal of the study centered on decisional competence and the role of immaturity; specifically whether age is associated with immature judgment (assessed using the Judgment in Legal Contexts instrument) and if immature judgment predicts decisions made about one's own case. The current study found few significant relationships between age or intelligence and variables coded from the JILC (including authority compliance, risk recognition, risk appraisal, future recognition, resistance to peer influence). Additionally, age and the perceived strength of evidence were not predictive of individuals' decisions to confess, to fully disclose to defense counsel, or to accept a plea bargain. Juveniles who had confessed scored higher on future recognition, those who fully disclosed to their attorney scored lower on authority compliance, and those who would accept a plea bargain scored higher on risk recognition and appraisal. While the results were modest, they suggest that immature performance on a judgment measure may predict individuals' legal decision-making. If a juvenile fails to appreciate the potential consequences of legal decisions, his or her decisional competence may be questioned. Generally, immaturity may need to be recognized as a basis for findings of incompetence if performance on relevant skills is shown to improve with age and immature performance is shown to interfere with competency.

No description available.

The Variable Child concerns the legal decision-making process in unaccompanied child refugee applications, and the role that conceptions of childhood play in the process. I examine when particular types of knowledge are drawn upon by legal actors, as well as the effects of the claim-making practices that create meaning, or truth effects, in legal decision-making. I identify how legal actors exercise discretion by investigating how facts are constructed with different ideas about childrens competence, abilities and knowledge. The Unaccompanied Child Refugee Evidentiary and Procedure Guidelines, which governs legal decisions, has embedded within it various, sometimes competing, conceptions of the child and childhood. These multiple notions create considerable discretionary space for refugee officers to make decisions about individual cases. My examination of legal decisions reveals a strategic use of vulnerable and/or responsible conceptions of childhood. Another strategy used to establish facts in these cases is to exclude the cultural differences of childhood both these practices are accomplished through employing several different knowledge moves. Refugee officers invoke vulnerable and/or responsible constructions of childhood to displace the impact of other/alternative constructions of childhood, namely Chinese ideas of parental relations. This avoids the potential for legal decisions to set standards for similar cases in the future. Childhood studies have documented how different axes of scholarly inquiry produce different understandings, typologies, and knowledges of the child and childhood. What remains understudied is how competing knowledges of the child and childhood are applied, negotiated, and formalized in legal decision-making. My study investigates how power relations constitute particular constructions of childhood, and the consequences these relations have for childrens lives. Unlike examining childhood as contextual, I document how variable understandings of the child and childhood are constituted, institutionalized, and normalized through the law. My study examines the complexities of legal decision-making, a process that is often black-boxed. I also trace which conceptions of childhood are drawn upon to substantiate legal claims, and how a social context for the child and childhood emerges. By examining the relations of law in the context of children, my work contributes to the growing area of childhood studies and socio-legal practices.

No description available.

This cumulative dissertation consists of investigations the brain processes related to legal and moral decision-making as well as a philosophical reflection. The behavioral main finding is that lawyers perceive themselves to be less emotionally involved during legal and moral decision-making than other academics. Regarding brain processes, the major finding is that legal decisions are correlated with stronger activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, suggesting a stronger engagement of rule application. The philosophical part reflects the normative implications of these investigations and comprises a wider discussion of neuroimaging in the context of clinical research.

No description available.

Heuristiken der Urteilsbildung umfassen bottom-up bzw. schemagesteuerte Strategien innerhalb der sozialen Informationsverarbeitung, mit deren Hilfe trotz unsicherer Datenlage hinreichend genaue Urteile gefällt werden können. Die Anker- und Anpassungsheuristik als eine Form solcher Faustregeln beschreibt im Wesentlichen die Wirkung von vorgegebenen Zahlen (den so genannten Ankerwerten) auf numerische Schätzungen. Urteile unter Unsicherheit sind zum Beispiel im Bereich der Rechtsprechung zu beobachten, wobei die Entscheidungsprozesse hier eher normativ auf der Basis der vorliegenden Informationen, d.h. einer datengesteuerten Verarbeitung, erfolgen sollten. <br><br> In einer Serie von drei Experimenten wurde die Ankerheuristik auf den Bereich der Rechtsprechung übertragen. Mit Hilfe der Vignettentechnik wurden <i>N</i> = 229 Rechtsreferendare sowie <i>N</i> = 600 Studierende der Rechtswissenschaften zu ihrem Strafverhalten befragt. Im Mittelpunkt standen drei Zielsetzungen: (1) die Replikation und Erweiterung der Ankereffekts in Bezug auf eine größere Gruppe von Deliktarten; (2) die Analyse individueller Unterschiede in der Ankernutzung unter Berücksichtigung verschiedener Persönlichkeitsvariablen (Need for Cognition und Need for Cognitive Closure) sowie (3) die Anregung zu verstärkter systematischer Informationsverarbeitung durch die Indizierung einer Genauigkeitsmotivation. <br><br> Der Ankereffekt in der juristischen Urteilsfindung konnte für die verschiedenen Deliktgruppen repliziert werden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die wahrgenommene Schwere der geschilderten Taten mit dem Strafmaß korrelierte. Dieser Zusammenhang wurde durch die Einführung von Ankerwerten deutlich reduziert. Entgegen den bisherigen Untersuchungen war zwar auch bei den Rechtsreferendaren ein Ankereffekt zu beobachten, der jedoch geringer ausfiel als bei den Studierenden der Rechtswissenschaften. Im Hinblick auf die Persönlichkeitsmerkmale konnte die Erwartung bestätigt werden, dass ein geringes Kognitionsbedürfnis sowie ein hohes Geschlossenheitsbedürfnis mit höherer Anfälligkeit für die Ankerheuristik einhergehen. Die Erzeugung eines Rechtfertigungsdrucks dagegen veranlasste die Probanden, sich intensiver mit den Materialien zu beschäftigen und eher datengeleitet vorzugehen. Implikationen für die juristische Praxis werden diskutiert. / Decisions are usually based on beliefs about the likelihood that an uncertain event will occur (i.e., the results of an election or the liability of the accused). In estimating the likelihood of those events people often revert to heuristics as a theory-driven processing strategy in order to reduce the effort of the decision-making process. On the one hand heuristics might be quite helpful in controlling information processing; on the other hand they can lead to systematic biases in judgments. Anchoring and adjustment describe a judgmental heuristic, where individuals gauge numerical size by starting from an initial arbitrary or irrelevant value (an anchor) and adjusting it during the subsequent course of judgment to arrive at their final judgment. However, the adjustment of the judgment typically remains insufficient, thus leading to judgments that are biased in the direction of the starting value. <br><br> The concept of judgmental heuristics can be applied to legal decision making. Legal decision-making is normatively defined as data-driven, which means that judgements about the culpability of a defendant need to be corroborated by evidence specific to the case at hand. Individuals involved in this process are required to assess the evidence without being affected by personal feelings and beliefs or by extraneous evidence. <br><br> A series of three experiments tested the impact of anchoring and adjustment on legal decision making. Using the vignette technique, <i>N</i> = 229 junior barristers and <i>N</i> = 600 law students evaluated scenarios describing criminal offences. Apart from replicating the anchoring effect in different samples, the studies explored the impact of individual differences in personality variables (need for cognition and cognitive closure) on the anchoring effect. Further, a strategy to promote data-driven processing by inducing an accuracy motivation was evaluated. <br><br> The results clearly indicate an anchoring effect in legal decision-making. The results showed a strong correlation between the perceived severity of the cases and the recommended sentence. This correlation was significantly reduced when an anchor was introduced. In contrast to previous studies, junior barristers showed a less extreme bias in their judgments compared to law students. In terms of individual differences regarding the readiness to engage in elaborate information processing the results showed a higher susceptibility for the anchoring information when need for cognition was low and need for cognitive closure was high. Introducing an accuracy motivation prompted the participants to engage in more data-driven processing, thus reducing the anchoring effect. The implications for social cognition research and legal practice are discussed.

Values matter in both legal decision (lawmaking and lawapplying) and discourse (lawshaping and lawinfluencing). Yet, their purported subjectivity means that gaining or improving knowledge about values (whether they be epistemic, legal, moral, ethical, economic, political, cultural, social, or religious) in the context of analytic legal thought and understanding is often said to be at odds with its goal of objectivity. This phenomenon is amplified at the international level where the infusion of seemingly subjective political values by sovereigns, and the decisionmakers to whom they delegate, can, and does, interfere with an idealized and objective rule of law. The discourse on value subjectivity, and its relation to the purpose and function of the law, is particularly apparent in evolving international legal orders such as investment treaty arbitration. The primary aim of this work is to provide a new method for gaining empirical knowledge about value subjectivity that can help close a weak link in all nonpositivist (value-laden) legal theory: a weakness that has manifest itself as skepticism about the possibility of measuring value objectively enough to permit its incorporation as a necessary component of analytic jurisprudence. This work proposes a theory of configurative fairness for addressing the problem related to the development or evolution of legal regimes, and how legal regimes perceived as subjectively unfair can be remedied. Such a theory accepts the premise that perceptions of fairness matter in directing the way that legal orders develop, and that perceptions of fairness relate to the manner in which values are distributed and maximized in particular legal orders. It is posited that legal orders perceived as fair by their participants are more likely to be endorsed or accepted as legally binding (and are therefore more likely to comply with the processes and outcomes that such laws mandate). The purpose of a theory of configurative fairness is an attempt to provide a methodological bridge for improving knowledge about value in the context of legal inquiry through the employment of a technique called Q methodology: an epistemological and empirical means for the measurement and mapping of human subjectivity. It is a method that was developed in the early twentieth century by physicist-psychologist William Stephenson: the last research student of the inventor of factor analysis, Charles Spearman. What Stephenson did was to create a way for systematically measuring subjective perspectives, and although not previously used in jurisprudential thought, Q methodology will facilitate a means for the description and evaluation of shared subjectivities. In the context of law generally, and in investment treaty arbitration specifically, these are the subjectivities that manifest themselves as the conflicting perspectives about value that are omnipresent in both communicative lawshaping discourse and authoritative and controlling lawmaking and lawapplying decision. Knowledge about these shared value subjectivities among participants in investment treaty arbitration will allow the legal analyst to delineate and clarify points of overlapping consensus about the desired distribution of value as they relate to the regime-building issues of evolving legal orders. The focus for a theory of configurative fairness pertains to the identification of the various value positions that participants hold about a particular legal order and to configure those values, through its rules and principles, in a manner that is acceptable (and perceived as fair) by all of its participants. If such a value consensus can be identified, then particular rules in the legal order can be configured by decisionmakers in a way so as to satisfy participants’ shared value understandings. To engage such a theory, a means for identifying shared value subjectivities must be delineated. This work conducts a Q method study on the issues under debate relating to regime-building questions in investment treaty arbitration. The Q method study asked participants knowledgeable about investment treaty arbitration to rank-order a set of statements about the way that the values embraced by this legal order ought to be configured. The results of the study demonstrate that there is significant overlap about how participants in investment treaty arbitration perceive the desired distribution of values across the regime. The Q method study identified six distinct perspectives that represent shared subjectivities about value in the context of the development of investment treaty arbitration. The Q method study was also able to identify where there is an overlapping consensus about value distribution across the distinct perspectives. It is these areas of overlapping consensus that are most likely to reflect shared value understandings, and it is proposed that it is upon these shared value understandings that the future development of investment treaty arbitration ought to aim.

Wie schätzen Menschen quantitative Größen wie zum Beispiel den Verkaufspreis eines Autos? Oft benutzen Menschen zur Lösung von Schätzproblemen sogenannte Cues, Informationen, die probabilistisch mit dem zu schätzenden Kriterium verknüpft sind. Um den Verkaufspreis eines Autos zu schätzen, könnte man zum Beispiel Informationen über das Baujahr, die Automarke, oder den Kilometerstand des Autos verwenden. Um menschliche Schätzprozesse zu beschreiben, werden häufig linear additive Modelle herangezogen. In meiner Dissertation schlage ich alternative ein heuristisches Modell zur Schätzung quantitativer Größen vor: das Mapping-Modell. Im ersten Kapitel meiner Dissertation teste ich das Mapping-Modell gegen weitere, in der Literatur etablierte, Schätzmodelle. Es zeigte sich, dass das Mapping-Modell unter unterschiedlichen Bedingungen in der Lage war, die Schätzungen der Untersuchungsteilnehmer akkurat vorherzusagen. Allerdings bestimmte die Struktur der Aufgabe - im Einklang mit dem Ansatz der „adaptiven Werkzeugkiste“ - im großen Maße, welches Modell am besten geeignet war, die Schätzungen zu erfassen. Im zweiten Kapitel meiner Dissertation greife ich diesen Ansatz auf und untersuche, in wie weit die Aufgabenstruktur bestimmt, welches Modell die Schätzprozesse am Besten beschreibt. Meine Ergebnisse zeigten, dass das Mapping-Modell am Besten dazu geeignet war die Schätzungen der Versuchsteilnehmer zu beschreiben, wenn explizites Wissen über die Aufgabe vorhanden war, während ein Exemplar-Modell den Schätzprozess erfasste, wenn die Abstraktion von Wissen schwierig war. Im dritten Kapitel meiner Dissertation, wende ich das Mapping-Modell auf juristische Entscheidungen an. Eine Analyse von Strafakten ergab, dass das Mapping-Modell Strafzumessungsvorschläge von Staatsanwälten besser vorhersagte als eine lineare Regression. Dies zeigt, dass das Mapping-Modell auch außerhalb von Forschungslaboratorien dazu geeignet ist menschliche Schätzprozesse zu beschreiben. / How do people make quantitative estimations, such as estimating a car’s selling price? Often people rely on cues, information that is probabilistically related to the quantity they are estimating. For instance, to estimate the selling price of a car they could use information, such as the car’s manufacturer, age, mileage, or general condition. Traditionally, linear regression type models have been employed to capture the estimation process. In my dissertation, I propose an alternative cognitive theory for quantitative estimation: The mapping model which offers a heuristic approach to quantitative estimations. In the first part of my dissertation l test the mapping model against established alternative models of estimation, namely, linear regression, an exemplar model, and a simple estimation heuristic. The mapping model provided a valid account of people’s estimates outperforming the other models in a variety of conditions. Consistent with the “adaptive toolbox” approach on decision, which model was best in predicting participants’ estimations was a function of the task environment. In the second part of my dissertation, I examined further how different task features affect the performance of the models make. My results indicate that explicit knowledge about the cues is decisive. When knowledge about the cues was available, the mapping model was the best model; however, if knowledge about the task was difficult to abstract, participants’ estimations were best described by the exemplar model. In the third part of my dissertation, I applied the mapping model in the field of legal decision making. In an analysis of fining and incarceration decisions, I showed that the prosecutions’ sentence recommendations were better captured by the mapping model than by legal policy modeled with a linear regression. These results indicated that the mapping model is a valid model which can be applied to model actual estimation processes outside of the laboratory.