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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Law, Politics, & Perception: How Policy Preferences Influence Legal Reasoning

Law, Politics, & Perception: How Policy Preferences Influence Legal Reasoning

Braman, Eileen

Hardcover

Series: Constitutionalism and Democracy

General Political Science

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 081392829X
ISBN13: 9780813928296
Publisher: Univ Of Virginia Pr
Published: Oct 29 2009
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.15
Height: 1.00 Width: 6.30 Depth: 9.40
Language: English

Are judges' decisions more likely to be based on personal inclinations or legal authority? The answer, Eileen Braman argues, is both. Law, Politics, and Perception brings cognitive psychology to bear on the question of the relative importance of norms of legal reasoning versus decision markers' policy preferences in legal decision-making. While Braman acknowledges that decision makers' attitudes--or, more precisely, their preference for policy outcomes--can play a significant role in judicial decisions, she also believes that decision-makers' belief that they must abide by accepted rules of legal analysis significantly limits the role of preferences in their judgements. To reconcile these competing factors, Braman posits that judges engage in motivated reasoning, a biased process in which decision-makers are unconsciously predisposed to find legal authority that is consistent with their own preferences more convincing than those that go against them. But Braman also provides evidence that the scope of motivated reasoning is limited. Objective case facts and accepted norms of legal reasoning can often inhibit decision makers' ability to reach conclusions consistent with their preferences.

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