Year: 2024
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Transparent, fair, and effective legal adjudication is integral to a healthy society, but adjudication does not always attain these aspirations. Miscarriages of justice and arbitrary outcomes undermine trust and confidence in the justice system. Addressing such challenges is problematic: legal adjudication is a complicated and oblique process, and our common sense or 'folk' theories of adjudication are often imperfect and not explicit or formalised. Legal psychology offers a more systematic way of providing insight, yet existing theories do not encompass or integrate all stages and aspects of the adjudicatory process, and struggle to account for some empirical observations. This thesis offers a more comprehensive theoretical account of legal adjudication that integrates key factors such as the values of the adjudicator, the applicable law, and reasons given for decisions. It suggests that some empirical observations that have previously been considered irrational behaviours can be integrated with such an account. The thesis provides empirical evidence for some of the central theoretical claims, demonstrating that adjudicators seem to take legally irrelevant or extralegal information into account to further their value outlook in a sophisticated and strategic way that is sensitive to the adjudicatory environment. The thesis also offers empirical evidence for asymmetrical order effects that arise when adjudicators consider pairs of similar cases sequentially, showing circumstances where adjudicators' later decisions are influenced to become more similar to earlier decisions, as well as circumstances where later decisions are influenced to be more dissimilar to earlier decisions. The thesis additionally indicates that casual explanations for offending behaviour based on genotype and previous childhood mistreatment can have a considerable mitigating effect on criminal justice outcomes.
Author: Troop, Paul Benjamin
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7065265008