Therapeutic Jurisprudence

Therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) is an interdisciplinary approach to the study and practice of law and the role of legal actors. It aims to focus on the often underappreciated aspect of the law and legal actors'role in producing therapeutic or antitherapeutic consequences. It is a normative framework that advocates the use of the social sciences to inform the processes and outcomes of legal interactions and procedures. It does not suggest that therapeutic concerns should override other important elements of the legal system (such as due process or justice concerns), but it does suggest that the therapeutic consequences of the law and legal actors be considered and systematically studied. TJ has become a highly influential framework for thinking about the law and the way legal actors interact with their clients.

The influence of TJ has recently begun to move from the conceptual to the empirical. Social science researchers are now beginning to empirically test the conceptual assumptions of the therapeutic framework. This is ushering in a new and exciting wave of TJ scholarship, for now, the TJ scholars are using not only the insights of the social sciences to develop law and legal processes but also the methods of the social sciences to test those insights. The near future of TJ scholarship promises to be an exciting and fruitful one for the development of law and legal processes.

This entry examines this newly emergent and important aspect of the intersections between law and psychology (and the wider social sciences). It provides an overview of the concept, a brief history of its development, a review of the practical implications of the framework, and an overview of its international appeal.