A Psychologist's Contribution to Legal Procedure*
| Author | L. R. C. Haward |
| Date | 01 November 1964 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1964.tb02249.x |
| Published date | 01 November 1964 |
A
PSYCHOLOGIST’S CONTRIBUTION
TO
LEGAL
PROCE’DURE
*
LAW
and psychology are alike in that they both deal with human
activities. Both are involved
in
an attempt to control behaviour;
the jurist explicitly, rationally and immediately; the psychologist
implicitly, empirically, and ultimately. There is however
no
common approach to the problems shared by both professions.
Whereas the psychologist is concerned with motivation, is deter-
ministic, and considers conduct activated primarily by emotion, the
jurist deals essentially with behaviour, assumes free will, and refers
to unrealistic ideals of conduct demanding complete emotional
control. A more important difference is that the law is based upon
common experience, commonly accepted beliefs, and by generally
adopted attitudes, while psychology restricts its laws to those
obtained by the hypothetico-deductive methods of classical .science.
For
criteria the psychologist looks to the standards of Descartes,
the jurist to the man on the Clapham omnibus.
LAW
AND
SCIENCE
This disparity comes about because the law diverges from psycho-
logy both as a science and as a profession. The law lags behind
science, and on occasion the court is warned against the expert and
instructed to disregard his evidence.
It
is little more than a decade
ago that a court sett,led a paternity case on resemblance and
evidence
of
copulation alone although an expert testified that the
typology
of
the relevant blood groups made this impossible
(Barry
v.
Chaplain).
The discouraging fact is that even intelligent people
argue in favour
of
common sense. Dr. Bicknell says in the
Stetho-
scope:
‘‘
If
it is once admitted that a single chemical test is of
more importance than the combined wisdom and common sense
of the judge, counsel, and jurors, then the whole course of
justice is admitted to be freakish and fallacious foolishness.”
Hadfield, who in
1800
was sensibly found insane and saved from the
gallows, would have failed to qualify under the McNaghten Rules
formulated nearly half a century later. Despite the fact that these
rules are harder to apply than those enunciated in
R.
v. a
century elapsed before they could be qualified (by the Homicide
Act,
1957)
or, as in certain American states, completely abandoned
*
Abridged
from
a
paper read to the Institute
of
Advanced Legal Studies,
1
T.
E.
Bicknell,
2
(1721)
16
St.Tr.
695.
University
of
Lo:don,
on
Tuesday, October
16,
1962.
The Breathalyzer,”
Stethoscope,
January 1961,
p.
4.
656
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