This book deals with a central problem throughout the legal profession -a solution to the problem is sought and reached in some basic form. At the centre of this prob lematic is the question indicated by the title: "What is the nature of "discovery" in legal decision-making?" In the final chapter that problem and the solution reached will be seen to have ramifications throughout the entire field of legal practice and theory. However, the focus of the argument is maintained first to specify adequately the particular manifestation of the problem in a variety of legal fields and secondly to arrive at a precise basic solution to this range of problems. The presentation of the solution is not dictated by the norms of clarity and coherence, but by the dynam ics of the struggle to reach the solution and by aspects of the problem available to various sub-groups within the legal profession -theorists, judges, arbitrators. So, I begin from a relatively familiar zone, discussions of discovery in legal theory before moving to more unfamiliar territory. This book is not a thorough survey of problems and writings on discovery. Rather, the strategic selection of problems and assessment of solutions across the first four chapters represents four aspects of the problem. Those chapters invite the reader to rise to the sense of occurrence of a single problem in a variety of contexts.

Over the years, psychologists have devoted uncountable hours to learning how human beings make judgments and decisions. As much progress as scholars have made in explaining what judges do over the past few decades, there remains a certain lack of depth to our understanding. Even where scholars can make consensual and successful predictions of a judge's behavior, they will often disagree sharply about exactly what happens in the judge's mind to generate the predicted result. This volume of essays examines the psychological processes that underlie judicial decision making.

This book argues that overcoming people's inability to recognize their own wrongdoing is the most important but regrettably neglected area of the behavioral approach to law.

Beliefs and expectancies influence our everyday thoughts, feelings, and actions. These attributes make a closer examination of beliefs and expectancies worthwhile in any context, but particularly so within the high-stakes arena of the legal system. Whether the decision maker is a police officer assessing the truthfulness of an alibi, a juror evaluating the accuracy of an eyewitness identification, an attorney arguing a case involving a juvenile offender, or a judge deciding whether to terminate parental rights--these decisions matter and without doubt are influenced by beliefs and expectancies. This volume is comprised of research on beliefs and expectancies regarding alibis, children's behaviour while testifying, eyewitness testimony, confessions, sexual assault victims, judges' decisions in child protection cases, and attorneys' beliefs about jurors' perceptions of juvenile offender culpability. Areas for future research are identified, and readers are encouraged to discover new ways that beliefs and expectancies operate in the legal system. This book was originally published as a special issue of Psychology, Crime & Law.