L-R Elisa Reiter and Daniel Pollack. Courtesy Photos Therapeutic Jurisprudence: How Judges, Lawyers and Mental Health Professionals Can Be Agents of Change
The goal is to mitigate the toll that prolonged litigation wreaks on families and, most importantly, on children.
September 14, 2023 at 12:56 PM
11 minute read
What is therapeutic jurisprudence, and how might family law judges implement therapeutic jurisprudence to serve the best interests of children and their families? Therapeutic jurisprudence ("TJ") originated in the context of mental health law. While mental health law should focus on helping people, parts of mental health law can be detrimental in practice. David Wexler is considered one of the founders of TJ. Simply stated, "[t]herapeutic jurisprudence explores how insights from other fields—such as psychiatry, psychology, criminology and social work—are useful to the law and how they can simultaneously be consistent with the due process framework." In addition, TJ "introduces a new perspective in the examination and assessment of the outcomes of laws and judicial decisions and the effect of these on the mental health of individuals involved in the legal process: offenders, victims, plaintiffs, and respondents as well as mental health and legal professionals," according to "Mainstreaming Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Family Law: The Israeli Child Protection Law as a Case Study."
The basic assumption of TJ is that the law, as applied, can have both therapeutic outcomes, which should be encouraged, and antitherapeutic ones, which should be minimized. For Wexler, the courtroom and social services should be intertwined. He identifies five areas of growth and change in the area of TJ:
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