Trying Not To Be Like Sisyphus: Can Defense Counsel Overcome Pervasive Status Quo Bias in the Criminal Justice System?

Date

2012

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Texas Tech Law Review

Abstract

Argues that there is a psychological bias toward the status quo-represented by police and prosecutors, who are themselves subject to this bias. Later attempts to prove that status quo bias is so pervasive, especially in the criminal justice system, that a counterweight is needed. The last major part of this Article illustrates ways in which defense counsel-and likely only defense counsel-can properly serve that function.

Description

Keywords

System-justification theory and ideology, Desert and the protestant ethic, Moral absolution, Conservative motivations, Conservatives and the status quo, Cognition, affect, and the just world, Basic cognitive principles, Basic affective principles, Selected promoters of systemic change, Criminal justice as the status quo's champion, Retributive punishment reinforces existing social norms, Attribution errors and naive realism, Miscellaneous system-justifying triggers, Law enforcement as the status ouo's symbolic representative, Expanding constitutional protection

Citation

Andrew E. Taslitz, Trying Not To Be Like Sisyphus: Can Defense Counsel Overcome Pervasive Status Quo Bias in the Criminal Justice System?, 45 Tex. Tech L. Rev. 315 (2012-2013)