Book Review: Law in a Therapeutic Key: Developments in Therapeutic Jurisprudence

✍ Scribed by Kirk Heilbrun

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 62 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0735-3936
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0798(199923)17:5<683::aid-bsl370>3.0.co;2-4

✦ Synopsis

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) was originally conceived as the study of how law might serve as a therapeutic agent, and to oer a dierent lens'' for viewing the relationship between law and the behavioral sciences. As TJ has continued to grow, it has been used not only as an analytic tool for understanding this relationship, but also for shaping itÐactively seeking ways in which scienti®c research and scholarship can enhance fairness and accuracy in legal policy and decisionmaking, in ways that are (broadly speaking) therapeutic.''

With the publication of Law in a therapeutic key: Developments in therapeutic jurisprudence (1996), co-editors and TJ collaborators David Wexler and Bruce Winick have added to an already impressive array of publications in this area. 1 However, this is not a ``stand-alone'' work. The reader will search in vain for an introductory or overview chapter on TJ at the beginning of the book (there are several chapters under the second section, `Commentary,' but no comprehensive overview). Rather, the breadth of topics and scholars speak to the signi®cant expansion of TJ in a relatively short time.

Reading this volume yields several other impressions, as described below.