A System of Pleas: Social Sciences Contributions to the Real Legal System
Vanessa A. Edkins and Allison D. Redlich
Abstract
The title of this work references a majority opinion from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy noting that the U.S. criminal justice system is no longer focused on trials but has become a system of pleas; that the system’s processes and protections need to adapt from trial protections to plea protections. Social science research likewise needs to expand beyond the courtroom and the jury room to address the multitude of factors involved in plea decisions and the influences at work on the various legal-system players (e.g., defendants, defense attorneys, prosecutors). This work is both a culmin ... More
The title of this work references a majority opinion from Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy noting that the U.S. criminal justice system is no longer focused on trials but has become a system of pleas; that the system’s processes and protections need to adapt from trial protections to plea protections. Social science research likewise needs to expand beyond the courtroom and the jury room to address the multitude of factors involved in plea decisions and the influences at work on the various legal-system players (e.g., defendants, defense attorneys, prosecutors). This work is both a culmination of the current state of plea bargaining research and a call to action for future researchers. All of the areas addressed—from innocents pleading guilty, to prosecutors charging decisions, to mass incarceration and felon disenfranchisement—merge to create a picture of the current U.S. criminal justice system as it really is, and how social science can move forward within it.
Keywords:
plea bargaining,
shadow of trial,
collateral consequences,
race,
pretrial detention,
juvenile justice,
attorney decision-making,
prosecutor decision-making,
defendant decision-making,
system of pleas
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190689247 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: March 2019 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190689247.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Vanessa A. Edkins, editor
Associate Professor of Psychology, Florida Institute of Technology
Allison D. Redlich, editor
Professor, Department of Criminology, Law and Society, George Mason University
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