Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

Brian L. Cutler, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Professor Cutler is a nationally known scholar in the area of Psychology and Law, particularly in the areas of eyewitness memory and jury decision making. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and has been published in dozens of articles in journals such as Law and Human Behavior and Journal of Applied Psychology. Professor Cutler is the primary author of Mistaken Identification: The Eyewitness, Psychology, and the Law and has contributed chapters to numerous edited volumes on Psychology and Law topics. Currently, Professor Cutler is Editor-in-Chief of Law and Human Behavior, the journal of the American Psychology-Law Society (Division 41, American Psychological Association).

This set is edited by Cutler (psychology, Univ. of North Carolina), whoalready has to his credit other scholarly works on the growing field ofpsychology and the law, including Mistaken Identification: TheEyewitness, Psychology and the Law. The legal topics addressed here spanthe major subdivisions of psychology-i.e., cognitive, developmental,clinical, biological, and industrial/organizational. The 400 entries areauthored by a score of international contributors, range in length fromone to five pages, and are arranged alphabetically by topic. In theintroduction, readers are encouraged to use the Reader′s Guide, whicharranges entries thematically-indeed, many entries appear in multiplecategories of the guide, and aspects of any given topic can range acrossthe two volumes. For example, the "Death Penalty" entry does not includethe same information found in the "Racial Bias and the Death Penalty"entry. The text offers the occasional unnecessary observation, such asthe first sentence in the "Sex Offender Community Notification (Megan′sLaws)" entry: "Sexual assault is a serious problem of great concern."Well, yes, absolutely, but we don′t need this encyclopedia to tell usthat. BOTTOM LINE There is no other reference work on psychology and thelaw, so libraries supporting curricula in this area may considerpurchasing. But because this field of study is still in its infancy, andit remains to be seen whether it will grow into something major, thisset is otherwise an optional purchase for most libraries. —Katherine Mossman, Everett P.L., WA