This chapter describes the legal landscape related to Miranda rights and waivers, as well as the relevant research literature regarding Miranda waiver decisions. The chapter identifies factors related to Miranda rights comprehension and waiver and emphasizes research addressing interrogations of youth and their abilities to provide a valid waiver. Research has identified that suspect-related factors, including age, IQ, and psychosocial maturity, as well as structural factors, such as the length, reading level, and content of the Miranda warnings, are related to Miranda comprehension and waiver decisions. The chapter also discusses the legal standard for judicial decisions related to the admissibility of confessions following Miranda waivers, as well as the factors that judges typically consider when making such decisions. Because research demonstrates that many suspects struggle when making Miranda waiver decisions, we conclude by making policy recommendations and identifying areas in which future research is needed.

This chapter will discuss the psychological processes by which pretrial publicity (PTP) can affect jurors’ and judges’ decisions. Pretrial publicity includes all media coverage (traditional and social media) of cases making their way to trial. Although many jurors believe they can ignore what they have read or heard about the case, and many judges believe they can effectively rehabilitate jurors exposed to PTP, this is typically not the case. These efforts and their effectiveness are examined in detail. Both positive and negative PTP can influence decisions in a variety of trial types (including civil and criminal). Jurors tend to examine this information through lenses such as predecisional influences that tend to focus on a particular side. Research also suggests they employ long-established narratives such as the story model in these situations. The chapter will synthesize this body of research and offer future directions and implications for the legal field.

This chapter addresses a basic question of general jurisprudence, that is, what difference law makes in moral space. It argues that a central characteristic of law is not necessarily that it tells us what morality (or justice) might dictate. Rather, it establishes a way of attributing decisions to all of us and not to any one of us in particular. Law’s distinctive moral virtue is not justice but legitimacy. What renders this possible is the operation of public officials whose value lies in acting in our name. The chapter defends what we label the standing conception of law, according to which law’s most basic moral contribution is that of establishing an entity whose normative pronouncements could count as being made in the name of (or even by) the people.

People undertake a decision-making process when they perceive a criminal opportunity although these decisions are often not purely rational. To clarify this process, several theories have been developed to explain how criminal decisions are made. Three such theories – deterrence theory, rational choice theory, and routine activity theory – along with major concepts from each theory, are examined in this chapter. Among the topics covered are the celerity, certainty, and severity of punishment, the utility of cost–benefit analysis, and the necessity of considering the role of a motivated offender, a suitable target, and the absence of capable guardians in explaining a criminal event. The limitations of a purely rational approach to criminal decision-making and how opportunity, incentive, emotion, and irrational thinking affect these decisions are also discussed. Finally, the practical and policy implications of these results are explored, after which recommendations for future research focusing on the methodology and domains that influence these decisions are made.

One of the core ideas of non-coherence theory is that human rights standards offline appear at variance with the online image. Human rights standards change in the course of the transposition, where the online image of offline standards may be widely distorted, given the subject, or only exhibit minor variance. Among several social science theories focusing on how values and expectations become relative once one constructs a theory on the basis of legal subject-hood, the capabilities approach seems to have some similarities with non-coherence theory. Two aspects are of main interest here. The first is related to the dependency of normative standards applied to a legal subject upon this subject’s capabilities. And the second concerns the matter of how the element of normative reasonability is constructed. The first aspect is positivist and the second is purely non-positivist. The unclear causal chains between capability, reasonability and subsequent activity are the weakest elements of the capabilities approach.

Non-coherence theory says that in order to speak of legal certainty in the digital domain, a domain-specific concept of justice has to be developed. But this would already lead to a far-reaching conclusion that there can exist different ideas of justice, which is a phenomenon of relativity reaching to the deepest bottom of human rights systems. A commonality would therefore need to be found between the concepts of legal certainty and predictability. Such commonality can be found from the functions of legal certainty and predictability, where the outcome of a judicial or quasi-judicial assessment assumes the existence of standards which are constant. Pursuing this commonality leads to the term the thesis of immunity to time. We observe a specific phenomenon of non-coherence, which is a simplification and move towards thinness because predictability can, by and large, be considered legal certainty without qualitative elements, such as the ideas of justice or equality.

As should be clear from the preceding 50 chapters in this book, the type and number of decisions made in the legal system are virtually endless. In the criminal context, the offenders decide to commit, the victims decide whether to report, and bystanders decide whether to report or cooperate. The police decide if and how they will interrogate. Suspects decide whether to cooperate with police and whether to accept a plea bargain. Attorneys decide whether to prosecute and encourage their clients to settle or negotiate a plea bargain. Psychologists decide if a defendant is competent, insane, and/or amenable to treatment. Jurors decide a verdict (and occasionally, as in death penalty trials, a sentence), and judges decide whether to admit evidence and what sentence a defendant should receive. In the civil context, people harmed decide whether to sue, and attorneys decide whether to take the case and what evidence to rely on. Judges make decisions throughout the civil litigation process, and both jurors and judges can make ultimate decisions (e.g., verdict, damages). Other decisions include legislators’ decisions on defining crime, social workers’ decisions on whether to take action against a parent who is under their supervision, parole board members’ decisions on whether a person in prison should be released, and so on.

THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE was one of the most important national libraries active in the manuscript trade in the early twentieth century. In addition to receiving a steady flow of donations, its curators consistently sought out new medieval manuscripts to enrich the already world-leading collection. The librarians operated within a value system distinct from other consumers in the market, spending not their own resources, but those allocated by the state to buy objects of cultural and national significance important to the nation’s heritage and the institution’s global reputation. Between 1874 and 1905, the library was directed by the formidable Léopold Delisle, a world-renowned scholar and public figure, who had previously held the role of curator of manuscripts. His reign marked a particularly fruitful era for the library’s manuscript holdings and his forced retirement in March 1905 inevitably had an impact on future acquisitions. Following his promotion in 1874, Delisle maintained his involvement in the activities of the department of manuscripts and worked closely with its curators. Henri Omont was promoted to curator of manuscripts in December 1899 and held this position until his retirement in 1933. Whilst he shared Delisle’s commitment to the library’s manuscript holdings, Omont did not have his mentor’s political influence. He did, however, possess a keen interest in the trade and shrewdly employed the department’s budget to buy manuscripts at what he deemed the fairest price.

Delisle’s career coincided with an era in which the market for medieval manuscripts was both relatively abundant and affordable. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the emerging participation of affluent American buyers in the European market drove up prices, especially those of illuminated books. Delisle had managed to secure for the Bibliothèque nationale a number of “manuscrits à peintures” in the previous decades (despite already “excessive” prices), but by the end of the nineteenth century the library was largely excluded from competing for such volumes. The library did, however, manage to obtain more modest manuscripts in large numbers, focusing in particular on items made in the region of modern France, written in the French language, or of French provenance. Omont’s first decade as curator was the most prolific of the twentieth century, benefitting from the initial support of Delisle and the dispersals of large collections formed in the previous century.

Clinicians can play an integral role in the ultimate determination of defendants’ criminal responsibility, given that information gleaned from mental state at the time of the offense (MSO) evaluations influence judges and jurors’ decision-making about a particular case. Such evaluations are particularly complicated due to their retrospective nature, lack of a standardized assessment approach, and variability in criminal responsibility statutes across jurisdictions and time. Yet several legal, clinical, and contextual factors appear to impact clinicians’ decision-making when tasked with these evaluations. In this chapter, we examine the existing literature regarding MSO evaluation referrals, including combined evaluations, to help inform practitioners’ expectations. Next, we review critical components of an MSO evaluation and identify challenges for clinical decision-making. Then we discuss forensic report writing and testifying, as informed by the literature regarding best practices. Lastly, we suggest how field reliability of mental state evaluations might improve through research and policy.