Law and the media: An overview and introduction.

Hans, Valerie P.

doi:10.1007/bf01044219

Cited by 19 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…impersonal unfairness as their worlds expand. It is also likely that this natural accrual of K and U experiences is modified by selection: There is evidence that we store and invoke the highly dramatic and accessible prototypes of unfairness, those seen in the media (e.g., Finkel, 1997;Hans, 1990;Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).…”

Section: Type and Blame Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This may be the way "naive psychology" works (Heider, 1958), but whether the consequence is good news or bad news no doubt depends on the details. For instance, the still-hot recollections of unfairnesses that happen to others we do not know may be good news, a sign of our empathy with humanity; but these same unfairnesses are likely to come to us through media sources, which generally select extremes to present (e.g., Hans, 1990). We do not hear about unfairnesses in the midrange near as much, let alone unfairnesses in the low range, and thus a fair presentation of the unfairness distribution does not result; when we add to that distortion the fact that ordinary and routine instances of fairness that occur all the time seldom receive any media attention, we realize that our picture of unfairness and the prototypes we construct may be quite skewed.…”

Section: Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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But it's not fair! Commonsense notions of unfairness.

Finkel¹

2000

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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Commonsense justice (N. J. Finkel, 1995b) is said to reflect what "ordinary people think is just and fair" (p. 2), yet little is known about "fair," and whether it reflects anything different than "just." As cries of "but it's not fair!" are shrill and frequent, 4 studies and 2 experiments were undertaken to elucidate the essence of unfairness. In the 4 studies, college students, tots and teens (ages 4-17), adults (ages 25-60), and elderly participants (ages 60-95) detailed their unfairnesses, which yielded more than 5,000 instances, and from these an inclusive and reliable schema for type of unfairness and for who or what is to blame resulted. Unfairness claims are not petty whines, in the main, but legitimate complaints, and outsider raters see them that way as well; nor are they simply narcissistic, for unfairness claims that happen to others engender the greatest heat. With basic notions of "unfairness" underlying so many of our judgments regarding legal, political, and interpersonal proceedings, this basic research attempts to fill a large gap in our understanding of Commonsense fairness and unfairness.

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Section: Type and Blame Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

But it's not fair! Commonsense notions of unfairness.

Finkel¹

2000

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law

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“…Some of the research on prototypes has examined where the prototypes come from, and the answers are not surprising. In a review of empirical studies, Hans (1990) cites the "mass media" effect, where television, radio, and newspaper accounts of sensational crime stories saturate the public with a "crime reality" that fails to match the actual crime reality. These available heuristics (Tversky & kahneman, 1974), amply supplemented by Hollywood movies and made-for-TV docudramas, further push the prototypes into extremis (e.g., Roberts & Doob, 1990) Another line of prototype research has examined the disparity between these lay prototypes and black-letter law (Smith, 1991;Stalans, 1993;Stalans & Diamond, 1990).…”

Section: Commonsense Justice and Crime Prototypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crime prototypes, objective versus subjective culpability, and a commonsense balance.

Finkel¹,

Groscup²

1997

Law and Human Behavior

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Crime prototypes, which have been linked to jurors' story constructions and verdicts, were elaborated through narratives, yielding 600 detailed stories, across seven different cases, in two experiments. These stories were manipulated under conditions that explored the prototypicality of the case, she verdict outcome, and whether it was a rightful or wrongful decision; the latter two manipulations, when combined, allowed for a comparison of actual outcomes versus true outcomes, and a measure of true culpability. Three or four prototypes, rather than one, emerged for all crimes, and though extraordinary rather than typical, they were far from simplistic. While the subjective element of motive dominated the culpability determination in Experiment I, objectivity prevailed in most cases in Experiment II. A commonsense and complex balancing of objective and subjective factors is the rule, while simplism was the rare exception. Objectivity versos Subjectivity in the LawCriminal law has long been divided on whether objectivity or subjectivity should be predominant in determining culpability (Fletcher, 1978). The conflict can be put this way: Should we look first and foremost to the objective act (the actus reus), or to the subjective intent (the mens rea), for deciding guilt? In the 19th century, where objectivity was preponderant, its leading advocate was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. In The Common Law, "widely considered the best book on law ever written by an American" (Posner, 1992, p. x), Holmes wrote that "the standards of the law are external standards . . . [and as] law only works within the sphere of the senses ... it is wholly indifferent to the internal phenomena of conscience (Holmes, 1881, p. 88)." Objectivity's heyday and hegemony would end, though. A century later, where the Model Penal Code (ALI, 1962) is regarded as the most influential legal work in this time, the Code, "in almost every section of its substantive provisions, moves toward, if it does not totally embrace, a fully subjective concept of mens rea (Singer, 1986, p. 246)."

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“…The interaction between the legal system and the media is a well-established field of research (Hans, 1990; Machura, 2017; Sarat, 2011). Rapping (2003) shows that the relationship between the law and the media is characterised by ‘a shared storytelling function’: while the legal system provides camera-ready stories, the media provide the corresponding narrative frames.…”

Section: Complementary Approaches In the Study Of Access To (Administrative) Justicementioning

confidence: 99%

Access to administrative justice and the role of outreach measures: empirical findings on the Austrian Ombudsman Board

Dahlvik

Pohn-Weidinger

2021

International Journal of Law in Context

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While access to civil-law institutions has been a traditional area of socio-legal research, access to administrative justice still constitutes an underresearched field. In the field of administrative law, public ombuds institutions represent an important pathway to resolve disputes without invoking a court. To date, we have little knowledge about who uses these ombuds institutions and which factors facilitate access to the ombuds. In this paper, on the basis of our survey among users of the Austrian Ombudsman Board (n = 8,274), we explore the effects of institutional design on the user population. The findings suggest that the two outreach measures – regular consultation days and a weekly TV broadcast – contribute to reducing existing inequalities with regard to users’ sociodemographic characteristics.

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Law and the media: An overview and introduction.

Cited by 19 publications

References 27 publications

But it's not fair! Commonsense notions of unfairness.

But it's not fair! Commonsense notions of unfairness.

Crime prototypes, objective versus subjective culpability, and a commonsense balance.

Access to administrative justice and the role of outreach measures: empirical findings on the Austrian Ombudsman Board

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