Winner, 2021 Lawrence S. Wrightsman Book Award, given by the American Psychology-Law Society Bridges family law and current psychological research to shape understanding of legal doctrine and policy Family law encompasses legislation related to domestic relationships--marriages, parenthood, civil unions, guardianship, and more. No other area of law touches so closely to home, or is changing at such a rapid pace--in fact, family law is so dynamic precisely because it is inextricably intertwined with psychological issues such as human behavior, attitudes, and social norms. However, although psychology and family law may seem a natural partnership, both fields have much to learn from each other. Our laws often fail to take into account our empirical knowledge of psychology, falling back instead on faulty assumptions about human behavior. This book encourages our use of psychological research and methods to inform understandings of family law. It considers issues including child custody, intimate partner violence, marriage and divorce, and child and elder maltreatment. For each topic discussed, Eve Brank presents a case, statute, or legal principle that highlights the psychological issues involved, illuminating how psychological research either supports or opposes the legal principles in question, and placing particular emphasis on the areas that are still in need of further research. The volume identifies areas where psychology practice and research already have been or could be useful in molding legal doctrine and policy, and by providing psychology researchers with new ideas for legally relevant research.

Offers psychological insights into how people perceive, respond to, value, and make decisions about the environment Environmental law may seem a strange space to seek insights from psychology. Psychology, after all, seeks to illuminate the interior of the human mind, while environmental law is fundamentally concerned with the exterior surroundings—the environment—in which people live. Yet psychology is a crucial, undervalued factor in how laws shape people’s interactions with the environment. Psychology can offer environmental law a rich, empirically informed account of why, when, and how people act in ways that affect the environment—which can then be used to more effectively pursue specific policy goals. When environmental law fails to incorporate insights from psychology, it risks misunderstanding and mispredicting human behaviors that may injure or otherwise affect the environment, and misprescribing legal tools to shape or mitigate those behaviors. The Psychology of Environmental Law provides key insights regarding how psychology can inform, explain, and improve how environmental law operates. It offers concrete analyses of the theoretical and practical payoffs in pollution control, ecosystem management, and climate change law and policy when psychological insights are taken into account.

Considers how research in psychology offers new perspectives on property law, and suggests avenues of reform Property law governs the acquisition, use and transfer of resources. It resolves competing claims to property, provides legal rules for transactions, affords protection to property from interference by the state, and determines remedies for injury to property rights. In seeking to accomplish these goals, the law of property is concerned with human cognition and behavior. How do we allocate property, both initially and over time, and what factors determine the perceived fairness of those distributions? What social and psychological forces underlie determinations that certain uses of property are reasonable? What remedies do property owners prefer? The Psychology of Property Law explains how assumptions about human judgement, decision-making and behavior have shaped different property rules and examines to what extent these assumptions are supported by the research. Employing key findings from psychology, the book considers whether property law’s goals could be achieved more successfully with different rules. In addition, the book highlights property laws and conflicts that offer productive areas for further behaviorally-informed research. The book critically addresses several topics from property law for which psychology has a great deal to contribute. These include ownership and possession, legal protections for residential and personal property, takings of property by the state, redistribution through property law, real estate transactions, discrimination in housing and land use, and remedies for injury to property.

Winner, 2021 Lawrence S. Wrightsman Book Award, given by the American Psychology-Law Society Bridges family law and current psychological research to shape understanding of legal doctrine and policy Family law encompasses legislation related to domestic relationships—marriages, parenthood, civil unions, guardianship, and more. No other area of law touches so closely to home, or is changing at such a rapid pace—in fact, family law is so dynamic precisely because it is inextricably intertwined with psychological issues such as human behavior, attitudes, and social norms. However, although psychology and family law may seem a natural partnership, both fields have much to learn from each other. Our laws often fail to take into account our empirical knowledge of psychology, falling back instead on faulty assumptions about human behavior. This book encourages our use of psychological research and methods to inform understandings of family law. It considers issues including child custody, intimate partner violence, marriage and divorce, and child and elder maltreatment. For each topic discussed, Eve Brank presents a case, statute, or legal principle that highlights the psychological issues involved, illuminating how psychological research either supports or opposes the legal principles in question, and placing particular emphasis on the areas that are still in need of further research. The volume identifies areas where psychology practice and research already have been or could be useful in molding legal doctrine and policy, and by providing psychology researchers with new ideas for legally relevant research.

Offers psychological insights into how people perceive, respond to, value, and make decisions about the environment Environmental law may seem a strange space to seek insights from psychology. Psychology, after all, seeks to illuminate the interior of the human mind, while environmental law is fundamentally concerned with the exterior surroundings—the environment—in which people live. Yet psychology is a crucial, undervalued factor in how laws shape people’s interactions with the environment. Psychology can offer environmental law a rich, empirically informed account of why, when, and how people act in ways that affect the environment—which can then be used to more effectively pursue specific policy goals. When environmental law fails to incorporate insights from psychology, it risks misunderstanding and mispredicting human behaviors that may injure or otherwise affect the environment, and misprescribing legal tools to shape or mitigate those behaviors. The Psychology of Environmental Law provides key insights regarding how psychology can inform, explain, and improve how environmental law operates. It offers concrete analyses of the theoretical and practical payoffs in pollution control, ecosystem management, and climate change law and policy when psychological insights are taken into account.

Considers how research in psychology offers new perspectives on property law, and suggests avenues of reform Property law governs the acquisition, use and transfer of resources. It resolves competing claims to property, provides legal rules for transactions, affords protection to property from interference by the state, and determines remedies for injury to property rights. In seeking to accomplish these goals, the law of property is concerned with human cognition and behavior. How do we allocate property, both initially and over time, and what factors determine the perceived fairness of those distributions? What social and psychological forces underlie determinations that certain uses of property are reasonable? What remedies do property owners prefer? The Psychology of Property Law explains how assumptions about human judgement, decision-making and behavior have shaped different property rules and examines to what extent these assumptions are supported by the research. Employing key findings from psychology, the book considers whether property law’s goals could be achieved more successfully with different rules. In addition, the book highlights property laws and conflicts that offer productive areas for further behaviorally-informed research. The book critically addresses several topics from property law for which psychology has a great deal to contribute. These include ownership and possession, legal protections for residential and personal property, takings of property by the state, redistribution through property law, real estate transactions, discrimination in housing and land use, and remedies for injury to property.

What is the potential for a divergence in views among civilian and military elites (sometimes referred to as the civil-military gap) to undermine military effectiveness? Although a variety of differences were found among the views of military and civilian survey respondents, these differences mostly disappeared when the authors focused on the attitudes that are pertinent to civilian control of the military and military effectiveness.