Everyday life and legal values: A concept paper

This "concept paper" emerged from a Law and Human Behavior (LHB) Workshop, that was called by the journal's Editor Richard Wiener and held at St. Loui s University on March 19-21, 1999 This workshop, which brought together 22 scholars and researchers in legal psychology, was part of James Ogloff's Pr esidential Initiative Project for the American Psychology/Law Society, and was supported by St. Louis University and an NSF grant. Prior to our arriva l, each participant answered queries from the Editor about LHB and the fiel d of psychology and law, and each was asked to offer five topics that were underrepresented in the journal or that we would like to See addressed in f uture issues. At the workshop, we were assigned to small groups, and the au thors of this paper constituted one such group. The "charge" for all groups was to "develop plans for encouraging submissions in areas of psycholegal scholarship that continue to be infrequent topics of investigation," and th en to develop a concept paper. The direction our group took is captured by our title, "Everyday Life and Legal Values," and within this paper we expli cate the topic, identify a number of underrepresented research areas, sugge st some research paradigms for investigating them, and present this within a "perspectival directions" frame that ties established lines of research t o the newer ones we propose.