Psychodynamics and the Insanity Defense: "Ordinary Common Sense" and Heuristic Reasoning

Authors

Michael L. Perlin, New York Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

I. Introduction

II. Psychodynamics and the Insanity Defense: Piercing the Veil of Consciousness ... A. Introduction ... B. The Significance of Wrong Verdicts ... C. The Behavioral Roots of Insanity Defense Decisionmaking—The Power of Heuristic Reasoning … 1. The Insanity Defense and Human Inference ... D. Ordinary Common Sense (OCS): The Unconsciousness of Legal Decisionmaking ...1. Introduction ... 2. OCS and the Insanity Defense ... 3. Jurisprudential Approaches to Explaining Deviance ... 4. Conventional Morality ... 5. OCS and Judicial "Cognitive Dissonance"... 6. A Twilight Zone: OCS and Individual Jury Verdicts

III. OCS and Heuristic Reasoning in Action: Two Case Studies ... A. Introduction ... B. Jury Research ... 1. Jury Nullification ... 2. Jury Research and Psychodynamic Conclusions ... C. Social Science Research .... 1. The Role of Social Science Data ... 2. Social Science and the Insanity Defense ... 3. Toward a Jurisprudence of Social Science? ... 4. The Psychodynamics of Judicial Suspicion ... D. The Psychodynamics of Judicial Attitudes ... 1. Justices' Signals ... 2. Judicial Philosophies

IV. Conclusion

Recommended Citation

Michael L. Perlin, Psychodynamics and the Insanity Defense: "Ordinary Common Sense" and Heuristic Reasoning, 69 Neb. L. Rev. (1990)
Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/nlr/vol69/iss1/3