Social Psychology and Its Applications

Politics & Social Sciences

Saks, Michael J.

Krupat, Edward

Social Sciences

Harpercollins College Div

After heart disease and cancer, the third leading cause of death in the United States is iatrogenic injury (avoidable injury or infection caused by a healer). Research suggests that avoidable errors claim several hundred thousand lives every year. The principal economic counterforce to sucherrors, malpractice litigation, has never been a particularly effective deterrent for a host of reasons, with fewer than 3% of negligently injured patients (or their families) receiving any compensation from a doctor or hospital's insurer.Closing Death's Door brings the psychology of decision making together with the law to explore ways to improve patient safety and reduce iatrogenic injury, when neither the healthcare industry itself nor the legal system has made a substantial dent in the problem. Beginning with an unflinchingintroduction to the problem of patient safety, the authors go on to define iatrogenic injury and its scope, shedding light on the culture and structure of a healthcare industry that has failed to effectively address the problem-and indeed that has influenced legislation to weaken existing legalprotections and impede the adoption of potentially promising reforms. Examining the weak points in existing systems with an eye to using law to more effectively bring about improvement, the authors conclude by offering a set of ideas intended to start a conversation that will lead to new legalpolicies that lower the risk of harm to patients. Closing Death's Door is brought to vivid life by the stories of individuals and groups that have played leading roles in the nation's struggle with iatrogenic injury, and is essential reading for medical and legal professionals, as well as lawmakersand laypeople with an interest in healthcare policy.

Closing Death's Door: Legal Innovations to End the Epidemic of Healthcare Harm

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Landsman, Stephan

Psychology & Counseling

Oxford University Press

This book is a student edition spin-off from the popular Science Law. The authors introduce law students to the rigors and details underlying scientific expert testimony, offering an entry point to a host of scientific fields that are highly relevant to the law. The book is designed to acquaint law students with scientific fields that are crucial to practicing law. Subjects include identification by fingerprints, handwriting, bitemarks, or voice, alcohol and drug testing, and DNA testing.

Science in the Law: Forensic Science Issues (American Casebook Series and Other Coursebooks)

Sanders, Joseph

Faigman, David L.

Kaye, D. H.

Criminal Law

West Group

Social psychology in court

Van Nostrand-Reinhold

The Psychological Foundations of Evidence Law (Psychology and the Law, 1)

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.

Spellman, Barbara A.

Legal History

NYU Press

Social Psychology in Court

Rules & Procedures

Krieger Pub. Co

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Books by Saks, Michael J.