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The Truth of Verdicts? A Social Psychological Examination of A Theory of the Trial

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Mona Lynch
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Extract

Robert Burns's A Theory of the Trial illustrates, quite masterfully, the many ways that the American trial is a much more dynamic and psychologically complex event in practice than its idealized legal version would suggest. Burns argues against what he calls the “Received View” of the trial, which can be characterized as the prevailing legal myth of how cases are structured, presented, and decided on in trial. This traditional legal model of the trial imagines the process following a very simple path to judgment: Reliable evidence is presented, the finders of fact assess credibility of witnesses and strength of evidence, that body then constructs a value-free narrative of the most likely scenario, and that narrative is then placed in one of the legal categories available, which determines the final verdict.

Type
Review Symposium on Robert Burns's A Theory of the Trial
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , Spring 2003 , pp. 539 - 546
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2003 

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