There is a dearth of behavioral-sciences-and-law (bsl) scholarship that employs an international, comparative, or cross-cultural perspective. Traditionally, bsl scholarship is national in its orientation. Thus, it is quite pleasing to have assembled five articles for this Special Issue on International Perspectives'' that address bsl issues from a non-traditional perspective. The four core articles (there also is a Special Perspective'' that the Issue Editors have contributed) in the Special Issue represent the kinds of research, theorizing, and writing that can open the horizons and expand the boundaries of traditional scholarship in the bsl area.
The first article is David B. Wexler's examination of ``Therapeutic Jurisprudence in a Comparative Law Context.'' Professor Wexler, a law professor with appointments at both the University of Arizona and the University of Puerto Rico, proposes a comparative law approach to assess the usefulness of the therapeutic jurisprudence notion that he and his colleague, Professor Bruce Winick (University of Miami School of Law), have advanced. Therapeutic jurisprudence recommends that legal rules and practices should be examined to evaluate their therapeuticรor anti-therapeuticรconsequences on those caught up in the legal system. Wexler points out some possibilities of, as well as some limitations to, undertaking comparative inquiries, and he offers a model for conceptualizing such undertakings in order to make it more likely that comparative scholarship will maximize its potential for usefulness.
The second article is by Ian Freckelton, who is both a practicing lawyer (barrister) in Australia and a law professor at Monash University (as well as current president of the Australia and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology and Law). In ``Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Evidence: The Travails of Counterintuitive Evidence in Australia and New Zealand,'' Mr. Freckelton provides an analysis of a type of expert evidence in child sex abuse cases. Mr. Freckelton is critical of the typical use of syndrome evidence in the courts. As he has elsewhere, Freckelton argues that only scientific information that corrects erroneous beliefs by factfinders regarding human behavior should be admitted into evidence. In the article, Freckelton focuses on child abuse accommodation syndrome (CAAS). He analyzes judicial opinions in Australia and New Zealand, comparing these decisions to the American legal system's treatment of CAAS. Freckelton proposes a taxonomy of evidentiary admissibility that will help courts to admit useful information without usurping the function of the factfinder.
The third article is authored by Sophia I. Gatowski,