Therapeutic Jurisprudence

Therapeutic Jurisprudence, "TJ", is an interdisciplinary perspective that focuses on the law's impact on the emotional and psychological health of the participants, mostly the clients. Some people refer to this as viewing law as a healing profession. The goal is to bring sensitivity into law practice and focuses on listening to clients with an awareness of the psychological and emotional issues including stress, confidence, trust.

TJ also looks at the court system and how it impacts society. It is a context for the legal system which can be applied to almost any practice and incorporated into the other approaches. Some would argue that most of the vectors are actually forms of TJ.

There is a lot written about Therapeutic Jurisprudence and we aren't going to repeat it all here. The leading academicians are David Wexler and Bruce Winick. The primary website is www.therapeuticjurisprudence.org.

In May, 2000, Court Review, the journal of the American Judges Association, published a symposium issue on therapeutic jurisprudence. The AJA's website is http://aja.ncsc.dni.us/courtrv/review.html. These articles, even their titles, may be of interest and demonstrate some issues in TJ:

-Judging for the New Millennium (William Schma)
-The Implications of TJ for Judicial Satisfaction (Deborah Chase and Peggy
Hora)
-Does Effective TJ Require Specialized Courts (and Do Specialized Courts
Imply Specialist Judges)? (David Rotman)
-Creating a Domestic Violence Court: Combat in the Trenches (Randal Fritzler and Leonore Simon)
-The Importance of Understanding Love and Other Feelings in Survivors'
Experiences of Domestic Violence (Kate Paradine)
-Mental Health Review Tribunals in the UK: Applying a TJ Perspective (Nicola
Ferenez and James McGuire)
-From Telling to Listening: A Therapeutic Analysis of the Role of Courts in
Minority-Majority Conflicts (Nathalie Des Rosiers)
-TJ on Appeal (Amy Ronner)