An editorial overview

Now is an excellent time to be doing research at the intersection of psychology and law. In the last few years, both the legal system and the legal academic community have taken more and more interest in the empirical findings of cognitive and social psychologists. Much of this interest has been provoked by the large number of convicted people who have been exonerated by DNA evidence. Examination of their cases reveals that most are associated with one (or more) of the following problems: bad eyewitness testimony, a false confession, or flawed forensic evidence. These issues are ones that psychologists have been investigating for years. For those of you new to this area, we recommend Elizabeth Loftus’s foundational work on so many areas of memory, Gary Wells’s work on eyewitness identification, Saul Kassin’s work on false confessions, and Reid Hastie’s work on jury decision making. All have written for both psychological and legal audiences.