Defining Legal Concepts (Reisberg, Applied Cognition, ch. 9)

As Chapter 9 in the textbook explains, many of the concepts we use seem not to have clear definitions, so that it is sometimes uncertain whether a specific instance is included within the concept or not. This creates substantial problems for the courts, because, when someone is accused of a crime, the courts must make a yes-or-no decision: Either the person is guilty of the crime or not. But if the definition of the crime has fuzzy boundaries, this obviously makes a yes/no decision difficult!

People who write laws try to avoid this quandary by giving their terms precise definitions, but the problem remains. Even with precise definitions, the courts often need to exercise their judgment in deciding whether a particular case fits the definition or not, and this judgment is certainly shaped by the judge's and jury's understanding of the terms at issue in the trial. This, of course, brings us right back to the difficulty-because their understanding of the relevant concepts won't provide clear definitions or precise boundaries.

It's important, therefore, to figure out what people have in mind when they think about concepts relevant to the law. What do people have in mind when they are thinking about, say, the crime of robbery, or trespassing? In tackling these questions, we can build directly on the claims developed in Chapter 9. For example, the chapter discusses the fact that people often have prototypes in mind for their various concepts, and the same is true for legal terms. This is why juries are more likely to convict someone if the trial facts fit the prototype for the crime closely. Thus, legal decision-making, like concept use in general, is influenced by typicality.

In addition, we argued in the chapter that concept users often seem to have a "theory" in mind about why a concept is as it is, and they use the theory in reasoning about the concept. For example, consider the crime of stalking. Both surveys and court cases make it clear that we cannot point to certain defining elements that identify a behavior as stalking. In some cases, the crucial evidence is that the person accused of stalking intended to cause fear in the person being stalked. In other cases, there is no evidence for intent, but jurors infer the intention from the fact that the stalking behavior persisted over many episodes. In still other cases, the jurors are influenced by the fact that the person accused was an ex-intimate of the person being stalked, with ex-lovers more likely to be perceived as stalkers than strangers in many settings.

What binds together these elements of stalking? It seems certain that jurors are relying on a broad set of beliefs about stalking-including what stalking is likely to involve, and what motivates one person to stalk another. In this way, stalking seems to rely on an implicit "theory" just as other concepts do. We must acknowledge this if we are to decide what stalking is and whether a particular individual should be convicted of this crime.

To learn more about this topic in cognitive psychology and the law:

See, in the textbook chapter, pages 291-296, 312-319

 * Dennison, S., & Thomson, D. (2002). Identifying stalking: The relevance of intent in commonsense reasoning. Law and Human Behavior, 26, 543-561.

* Smith, V. L., & Studebaker, C. A. (1996). What do you expect? The influence of people's prior knowledge of crime categories on fact-finding. Law and Human Behavior, 20, 517-532.

Huntley, J., & Costanzo, M. (2003). Sexual harassment stories: Testing a story-mediated model of juror decision-making in civil litigation. Law and Human Behavior, 27, 29-51.