Judging in a Therapeutic Key


Book Description

Part I of this book describes the newly emerging problem-solving courts (such as drug treatment courts, domestic violence courts, mental health courts, etc.) and other related approaches to problem-solving judging and judging with an explicit ethic of care. Authors Winick and Wexler show how judges can use therapeutic jurisprudence not only in specialized problem-solving courts, but in general civil and criminal judicial settings as well. In Part II, the book covers emerging "principles" of therapeutic jurisprudence that seem to be at work in successful judicial approaches: how courts can encourage offender reform, how they can help offenders develop problem-solving and coping skills, how they can encourage offender compliance with release conditions, how they can serve as effective risk managers, and much more. "Rarely does the academic work of law scholars have such a clear-cut impact in shaping the research agendas of a broad range of legal academics. Rarer still are the times when such legal scholarship positively impacts the working lives of judges and practicing lawyers. As these essays make abundantly clear, therapeutic jurisprudence has come of age as a legal discipline in its own right, ready to be further tested carefully and strategically within our judicial system... The authors assembled in this worthy volume believe strongly in the law's potential to serve as a 'healing agent' and seek to cast judges and lawyers in the roles of peacemakers and creative problem-solvers. Their vision deserves our serious consideration." -- The Journal of Legal Medicine "Winick and Wexler have gathered an impressive collection that both introduces the topic to newcomers and provides additional depth for those already generally aware of the concepts." -- Steve Leben in The Justice System Journal




Therapeutic Jurisprudence


Book Description

Therapeutic Jurisprudence is a special issue (Volume 20 No 2) of the journal Law in Context. The contents are listed below. You can read the abstract for each chapter by clicking on its title.You can purchase a single copy of this issue through this page, or subscribe to the journal from the journal page.




Law in a Therapeutic Key


Book Description

Law in a Therapeutic Key is an anthology of works written by authors from a variety of backgrounds. This book illustrates some of the best and most provocative new therapeutic jurisprudence work in fields ranging from mental health law to correctional law, criminal law, family and juvenile law, evidence law, labor arbitration law, and many more. "[A] rich compendium of the best of what David Wexler and Bruce Winick have wrought... a mature and reflective work, and the most comprehenisve treatment of the therapeutic paradigm to date." -- John Monahan, University of Virginia "The crucial insight embedded in these essays is that all law, ranging from contracts to criminal law, can promote or retard the psychological well-being of persons who become involved with the legal system. Unless we acknowledge these therapeutic considerations in the law-making process, we risk fostering individual--and therefore societal--dysfunction." -- Paul Appelbaum, University of Massachusetts Medical Center




Rehabilitating Lawyers


Book Description

This book seeks to bridge the traditional divide between scholarship and practice in the field of law. It introduces the interdisciplinary perspective of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) and then, largely through the thoughtful and informative essays of practitioners and clinical law professors, shows how criminal law practice can be enriched -- and how clients can benefit -- from lawyers looking at their practice with a TJ lens. Lawyers can be positive change agents for many of their clients, and will find that this approach can markedly increase their own professional satisfaction and enhance their professional image. "Rehabilitating Lawyers is the kind of smart and balanced book too often absent from the fractious debate about the future of our criminal justice system. By embracing healing as a legitimate criminal justice goal, Professor Wexler offers up an exciting new paradigm in which lawyers finally deserve the label 'counselor.'" -- Robin Steinberg, Executive Director, Bronx Defenders "Criminal law, criminal lawyers and their clients need more than skillful representation in court. For the cycle of offending to be slowed, for criminal law to meet its stated objectives, and for criminal lawyers to survive burnout, fundamental reconceptualising of the law and lawyering are needed. Rehabilitating Lawyers provides a challenging way of reframing through therapeutic jurisprudence how opportunities for reclamation of offenders can be fostered and criminal lawyers can play a role in reducing recidivist offending. It explores how the ethical practice of criminal law by attorneys and judges alike, from charging through trials and sentencing and into probation, can be made more humane and constructive." -- Dr. Ian Freckelton SC, Barrister, Melbourne, Australia, Professor of Law, Forensic Medicine and Psychological Medicine, Monash University "The editor hopes that this book will bridge the wide academic/legal practitioner divide. It has done so admirably....This inspirational edition deserves wide circulation and further incorporation of its ideas into legal education, court practice and legislative action." -- Law Institute Journal, October 2008 "The most interesting, important and innovative book I have read about the practice of law in many years. I'm a former Public Defender (still one at heart), and I hope this book is read by all of those who devote themselves valiantly to this most undervalued position. Anyone who has ever represented a criminal defendant owes Professor Wexler a great debt of gratitude."-- Professor Michael L. Perlin, Director, International Mental Disability Law Reform Project, Director, Online Mental Disability Law Program New York Law School "Wexler's collection deserves a place on the shelves of academics interested in this important area of legal education; it is a balanced well referenced source, and a great primer for this area of theory and practice. An equally important reading audience are court administrators, judges and Attorneys General who have the clout to implement some of these suggestions." -- Australian Lawyers Alliance Journal




Enforcing Freedom


Book Description

In 1989, the first drug-treatment court was established in Florida, inaugurating an era of state-supervised rehabilitation. Such courts have frequently been seen as a humane alternative to incarceration and the war on drugs. Enforcing Freedom offers an ethnographic account of drug courts and mandatory treatment centers as a system of coercion, demonstrating how the state uses notions of rehabilitation as a means of social regulation. Situating drug courts in a long line of state projects of race and class control, Kerwin Kaye details the ways in which the violence of the state is framed as beneficial for those subjected to it. He explores how courts decide whether to release or incarcerate participants using nominally colorblind criteria that draw on racialized imagery. Rehabilitation is defined as preparation for low-wage labor and the destruction of community ties with “bad influences,” a process that turns participants against one another. At the same time, Kaye points toward the complex ways in which participants negotiate state control in relation to other forms of constraint in their lives, sometimes embracing the state’s salutary violence as a means of countering their impoverishment. Simultaneously sensitive to ethnographic detail and theoretical implications, Enforcing Freedom offers a critical perspective on the punitive side of criminal-justice reform and points toward alternative paths forward.




Therapeutic Jurisprudence Applied


Book Description

A sensitive policy analysis of law should seek to measure and weigh all of the costs and benefits of legal rules. This book suggests ways in which mental health law can be reshaped -- not only to protect the legal rights of patients, but also to improve their mental health. "[A] lesson on where and how to focus the therapeutic jurisprudence lens so that the concept generates original and fruitful ideas." -- Thomas Grisso, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, Department of Psychiatry "[The chapters] demonstrate that therapeutic jurisprudence provides a remarkable number of new insights into mental disability law... Litigators, scholars, policy makers, and mental disability professionals all owe Professor Winick a tremendous debt for the thoughtful, original, and provocative work that he has done." -- Michael L. Perlin, New York Law School "For novices in the field, it is an exciting view of a difficult corner of the law. For those who have spent their careers in the area, this work is both eye-opening and rejuvenating." -- Christopher Slobogin, University of Florida College of Law




Practicing Therapeutic Jurisprudence


Book Description

In recent years, the interdisciplinary perspective of therapeutic jurisprudence -- which focuses on the law's impact on emotional life and psychological well-being -- has increasingly moved from the academic world into the world of judging and law practice. The psychological sensitivity and insights provided by the 'lens' of therapeutic jurisprudence have mixed with the pragmatic procedures of related perspectives -- such as preventive law -- to allow interested lawyers to truly 'practice' therapeutic jurisprudence. Stolle, Wexler, and Winick designed this volume -- covering civil and criminal contexts and courtroom and law office settings -- for practicing lawyers as well as for use in clinical courses, in legal counseling courses, and in courses on 'new directions' in lawyering. It will be of value and interest to those engaged in preventive law, collaborative law, restorative justice, holistic lawyering, mediation and alternative dispute resolution, and indeed to all who seek to humanize the law and its practice -- and to enrich the lives of lawyers. With this volume, law can take its rightful place as a legitimate member of the helping professions. "[This book] is a wonderful tool for lawyers in criminal or civil practice, litigation, and in all fields of law including dispute resolution." -- Carolyn E. Hansen, New York Law Journal "This collection of articles includes the theoretical basis of TJ, but most importantly, it shows how TJ can be used in a variety of settings and practice areas." -- Richard L. Halpert, American Bar Association




Retribution, Justice, And Therapy


Book Description

One might legitimately ask what reasons other than vanity could prompt an author to issue a collection of his previously published essays. The best reason, I think, is the belief that the essays hang together in such a way that, as a book, they produce a whole which is in a sense greater than the sum of its parts. When this happens, as I hope it does in the present case, it is because the essays pursue related themes in such a way that, together, they at least form a start toward the development of a systematic theory on the common foundations supporting the particular claims in the particular articles. With respect to this collection, the essays can all be read as particular ways of pursuing the following general pattern of thought: that a commitment to justice and a respect for rights (and not social utility) must be the foundation of any morally acceptable legal order; that a social contractarian model is the best way to illuminate this foundation; that a retributive theory of punish ment is the only theory of punishment resting on such a foundation and thus is the only morally acceptable theory of punishment; that the twentieth century's faddish movement toward a "scientific" or therapeutic response to crime runs grave risks of undermining the foundations of justice and rights on which the legal order ought to rest; and, finally, that the legitimate worry about the tendency of the behavioral sciences to undermine the values of




Law in Theory and History


Book Description

This collection of original essays brings together leading legal historians and theorists to explore the oft-neglected but important relationship between these two disciplines. Legal historians have often been sceptical of theory. The methodology which informs their own work is often said to be an empirical one, of gathering information from the archives and presenting it in a narrative form. The narrative produced by history is often said to be provisional, insofar as further research in the archives might falsify present understandings and demand revisions. On the other side, legal theorists are often dismissive of historical works. History itself seems to many theorists not to offer any jurisprudential insights of use for their projects: at best, history is a repository of data and examples, which may be drawn on by the theorist for her own purposes. The aim of this collection is to invite participants from both sides to ask what lessons legal history can bring to legal theory, and what legal theory can bring to history. What is the theorist to do with the empirical data generated by archival research? What theories should drive the historical enterprise, and what wider lessons can be learned from it? This collection brings together a number of major theorists and legal historians to debate these ideas.