Bruce Winick

Editor's Note: David Wexler is Professor of Law and Director, International Network on Therapeutic Jurisprudence,University of Puerto Rico and a Distinguished Research Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology, University of Arizona. With Bruce Winick, he is the co-founder of the movement of therapeutic jurisprudence. Since we haven't caught up with David to interview him, he has graciously allowed us to reprint a recent law review article. .

It begins below but is attached in PDF form in its entirety so that formatting such as footnotes will be preserved.

Introduction

At the University of Puerto Rico School of Law (UPR) in the fall term of the 2008-2009 academic year, I offered, for the first time, a sentencing and corrections seminar—approached, of course, with a distinctly therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) spin. During that term, I was also asked to review a manuscript prepared by Florida Coastal School of Law student Dax Miller. Dax Miller’s paper, prepared for Professor Susan Daicoff’s Comprehensive Law course and published in The Florida Coastal Law Review,[1] did not relate to sentencing and corrections. Rather, it critiqued, from a TJ perspective, the standard Florida divorce agreement form.[2] Moreover, Dax Miller proposed a rewritten form, one highly consistent with TJ principles.[3] At just the time that I read Dax Miller’s paper I came across, in my assigned sentencing casebook, the federal pretrial diversion form,4 and concluded that it too was in desperate need of Daxing. Suddenly, it occurred to me that Dax Miller had opened up a completely new potential branch of TJ scholarship—what might be called Form Reform.

From http://www.therapeuticjurisprudencecenter.org/

Since my last blog, we've put thousands of miles on the Honda CRV and we've gone through several boxes of blank tapes. With interviews in South Florida, Tennessee, and Texas, we've come close to doubling our video inventory. I'm so excited about our latest interviews that I wish I could twitch my nose and get them on the site immediately.

From Florida: TJ leader Bruce Winick, several very inspiring and pioneering problem-solving courts judges, and Scott Rogers on mindfulness.

In July, 2009, the University of Miami School of Law will present a 3 credit course in therapeutic jurisprudence that will be taught by Profs. Bruce J. Winick and David B. Wexler, the co-founders of the field. The course is open to law students in the U.S. and elsewhere, to graduate students and professors in law, psychology, criminology, sociology, psychiatry, philosophy, and other disciplines, and to lawyers, judges, psychologists, psychiatrists, and those working in law enforcement and the courts. The course may be taken for credit or non-credit.