Law in a Therapeutic Key: Developments in Therapeutic Jurisprudence
Blurbs:
Law in a Therapeutic key is a rich compendium of the best of what David Wexler and Bruce Winick have wrought. Their heuristic notion that law could be used to “therapeutic” ends has become a staple of scholarship in mental health law. With the publication of this book, the full reach and potential of Wexler and Winick’s ideas become manifest. Not only mental health law, but torts, contracts, evidence and family law, among many other areas, are examined for their therapeutic–or antitherapeutic–implications. This is a mature and reflective work, and the most comprehensive treatment of the “therapeutic” paradigm to date.
John Monahan
Doherty Professor of Law
Professor of Psychology and Legal Medicine
University of Virginia
Read this book and you will never view law in quite the same way again. The crucial insight embedded in these essays is that all law, ranging from contracts to criminal law, can promote or retard the psychological well-being of persons who become involved with the legal system. Unless we acknowledge these therapeutic considerations in the law-making process, we risk fostering individual-and therefore societal-dysfunction. Let the wise take heed.
Paul S. Applebaum, M.D.
Chairman, Department of Psychiatry
A.F. Zeleznik Professor of Psychiatry
Director, Law and Psychology Program
University of Massachusetts Medical Centre
The authors are veritable pioneers in this remarkably new discipline.
Although one may logically surmise that therapeutic jurisprudence applies exclusively to the study of law and psychology, through their book, the authors have amply demonstrated that it is not so limited. rather, therapeutic jurisprudence is a conceptual framework which, in their words, “brings together a number of topics that have not generally been recognized as related.”
Law in a Therapeutic Key is an exceptionally comprehensive collection of fifty articles,. . . Sarena W. Mayer, Esq.
Touro College, Jerusalem, Israel
Clinical Sociology Review, Vol. 15, 1997
Sociological Practice Association
This is an intriguing collection of essays about the psychological effects of a diverse array of legal rules, procedures and practices. Using the lens of therapeutic jurisprudence, the authors have peered into many hidden nooks of the legal system, drawing some provocative conclusions and lighting the path for future research.
It has become clear that “therapeutic jurisprudence” is not simply a canopy for scholarship about the therapeutic impact of mental health law. This volumes demonstrates, quite convincingly, that therapeutic jurisprudence has helped to reconfigure and redirect scholarship in law and the clinical behavioral sciences. In so doing, it has stimulated creative thinking about the diverse connections between law and human well-being. Professors Wexler and Winick should take great pride in their accomplishment.
Richard J. Bonnie
John S. Battle Professor of Law and
Director, Institute of Law,
Psychiatry and Public Policy
University of Virginia
