Legal Trends Network

Therapeutic Jurisprudence focuses on the therapeutic or countertherapeutic consequences of the law and legal procedures on the individuals involved, including the clients, their families, friends, lawyers, judges, and community. It attempts to reform law and legal processes in order to promote the psychological well-being of the people they affect.

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) is a term first used by Professor David Wexler, University of Arizona Rogers College of Law and University of Puerto Rico School of Law, in a paper delivered 1987. He and co-originator of the concept, Professor Bruce Winick, University of Miami School of Law, suggested a need for a new perspective to study the extent to which substantive rules, legal procedures, and the role of lawyers and judges, produce therapeutic or antitherapeutic consequences for individuals involved in the legal process.

Experimental courts Like Red Hook Community Justice Center (see the links section below) are evaluating every facet of therapeutic processes to determine the benefits to society and the justice system. The drug courts (like that pictured above presided over by Judge Peggy Hora, looking on happily as a drug offender meets requirements to stay out of jail), mental health courts and family courts that are springing up all over the world are a direct result therapeutic jurisprudence movement. (Photo by Ron Lewis of the Daily Review - Judge Peggy Hora's drug court.)

Additional Resources:

• Problem-Solving Courts
• Restorative Justice
• Criminal & Prison Reform
• Community Lawyering
• Juvenile Justice
• Creative Problem Solving