LAW AND PSYCHOLOGY AND, LEGAL PSYCHOLOGY

Current legal studies in this background use an interdisciplinary approach under two categories; one, as law and psychology and the other, as legal psychology. Both fields of interdisciplinary knowledge have something in common and, unique and interesting. They both deal with human behavior; law as regulators of human behavior and, psychology as tools of knowledge to understand motive or cause of human behavior. Both have predominant interests on social relations and human relations; law that deals with relationships between people and persons arising out of legal obligations and, psychology that deals with relationships between people and persons arising out of socio-economiccultural relations, in any society.

Their prime concerns are practical applications and utilities; law that regulates as well as gives remedies through legal systems and, psychology that analyses as well as gives solutions through counseling and treatments. They both aim, believe and want to bring justice in life as a whole; law in socio-economic-cultural terms through equality, liberty and fraternity and the legal ascertainment of rights and obligations, psychology in terms of health and wellbeing through balance in mind-emotion-body complex and the psychological methods of arriving at harmony. Both law and psychology have conceptual foundations of value systems as well as empirical necessities for impact management. In short, a good lawyer can understand the psychological explanations on the nature of interrelations in social life and a good psychologist can understand the efficient ways of law-making directives and policies towards effective compliances.

Legal psychology is yet another subset of law and psychology. It researches– doctrinal, empirical and action-oriented values on the nature of certain legal questions, assistance to legal systems, legal institutions or on those who come into terms with law and its processes. It is done by those who have psychological understanding of social, cultural, economic, medical, scientific and forensic issues having implications on legal knowledge, systems and processes. Knowledge of various branches of psychology is applied on all kinds of elements and actors of law and legal systems. To put it in simple terms, it is psychology as a whole on ‘law in theory’ and ‘law in action’. Those who practice on this field of study–legal psychologists, are principally practitioners of psychology with or without legal knowledge and their findings on law are from psychological prism and scanner of understanding adding a flavor of psychology to law, legislature, legal interpretations and legal actions.

There are two ways by which this can be understood. One, a scientific and an objective investigation into the behavior of human nature and its body resulting in a visible or tangible conduct and the other, a psychological study to interrelate and map the cause and effect in any pattern of behavior leading to an outward conduct. This whole of psychological knowledge is largely mixed by physical or objective contexts as well as subjective or psychological frameworks. Yet, both constitute and contribute to one line of action or legally speaking a ‘conduct’ wherein the cause-effect relationship is seen with mind and emotion as a process of energy leading to physical and outward behavior of social conduct.

Former is the ‘animus’, an inner motivation or invisible energy behind and, the latter which is the ‘actus’, a physical act and conduct of commission or omission of doing or not-doing-things. Law and legal knowledge cannot afford to avoid this continuity of understanding or presentation from ‘animus to actus’ or ‘mind to conduct’. Soundness of mind, detecting a lie, motivation to commit offences, attitudes resulting in harm, process of memory and witness, sense of guilt, intelligence, capability, perception, foreseeability, intention to deviate from norm, ideas, thought, belief, cognition, faith, depression, punishment, rehabilitation, deterrence, morality, public policy, responsibility, trust, reason, logic, children, women, life, death, sex and any state of mind-emotion-body intricacies of behavior and their complexity etc., are some of the aspects that can largely be covered under legal psychology. Law and psychology overarches into policies and legal frameworks whereas legal psychology comes to rescue by certain empirical or verifiable findings.