NCJ Number
177988
Journal
Behavioral Sciences & the Law Volume: 15 Issue: 3 Dated: Summer 1997 Pages: 285-305
Date Published
1997
Length
21 pages
Annotation
This article proposes a theoretical framework for understanding how the innovative use of behavioral science evidence is both produced and diffused among members of the global legal community.
Abstract
Case law analyses and interviews with key individuals involved in selected cases were used to study how battered woman syndrome is produced and diffused between and among Australia, Canada, England, and the United States. The following diffusion mechanisms were proposed: (1) the availability and accessibility of credible dissemination sources; (2) characteristics of the overall practice environment operating in each legal culture; (3) the attitudes and knowledge of attorneys and judges about the use of scientific evidence; (4) political and social support for the use of the evidence in the legal culture; and (5) the level of structural equivalence, communication and “neighbor effects” between and among legal cultures. Studying the innovative use of scientific ideas as evidence in different legal cultures has implications for the refinement of evidence law and admissibility standards, for continuing education of attorneys and judges, for the instruction law schools provide about science, and for understanding courts’ impact on the social construction of science itself, both within a given country and globally. Notes, references