How do people understand laws? Why are laws often difficult to understand? The Day Cognition Lab studies basic cognitive processes involved in understanding and applying laws, especially comprehension, memory, problem solving, and decision making. Although legal terminology is often blamed for making laws difficult to understand, other problems are involved as well. We focus primarily on the underlying logical structure, linguistic complexity, and alternative representations of laws.

Who:

--potential jurors --jurors --judges --magistrates

--lawyers --law students --legislators --regulators

What:

--the underlying logical structure of laws --the linguistic structure of laws --alternative representations of laws --the role of prior knowledge in understanding laws

How:
Typical Experiment
Participants study a law (e.g., a brief excerpt from the model penal code), read brief descriptions of cases, then make decisions (e.g., whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty). Laws are presented in either their original form or ones we devise to test logic, language, or representation issues. Basic cognitive processes tested are: comprehension, memory, problem solving, decision making.

Jury Simulation
Same basic approach as experiments, but with multiple jurors who discuss the cases before deciding them.

Implications:

--strategies for understanding laws --jury instructions --writing laws --how cognitive processes operate in everyday settings

Research to date has been on:

--criminal law (e.g., understanding the insanity defense) --food and drug law (e.g., "duty to warn") --contracts (e.g., how they change during negotiations)

However the general issues, principles, and approaches extend to all areas of the law. Current work involves using the same research paradigms across disparate areas of the law, to study how people understand the logical structure of laws as well as the language in which they are written.

For more information about the Joint Degree Program in Law and Psychology, see descriptions provided by the Law School and Psychology Department.