Chicago's Best Ideas: Emily Buss

Law AND

Chicago’s original best idea was the one on which it was founded: That law should be studied alongside other disciplines that together make up, in the words of our founders, “the whole field of man as social being.” The value of studying law through the lens of other disciplines is well celebrated, here, most famously through our prowess in law and economics, but also through our superb scholarship and teaching in legal history, jurisprudence and other interdisciplinary work. Professor Buss will focus on the “law and” that is most important to her work: Law and Psychology. Developmental psychology has proved highly influential in recent decades in the field of Juvenile Law and cognitive psychology is beginning to make modest inroads in the law of Evidence. Professor Buss will consider these examples both to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinary collaboration in law and to highlight some dangers that might be relevant to other “law and” approaches as well.