David Wexler

David Wexler posted this on the TJ list:

Problems Oriented Courts Court Intervention Programs Final Report

The Law Reform Commission is pleased to announce the release of its Final Report on Court Intervention Programs.

The Final Report which sets out the Commission's conclusions and final recommendations is intended to be read in conjunction with the Commission's detailed Consultation Paper which describes how various court intervention programs operate and provides additional research and analysis.

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.

1) David B. Wexler, Therapeutic Jurisprudence in Puerto Rico: An Introduction to the Special Issue, 78 Rev. Jur. U.P.R. 1 (2009).

http://www.law.arizona.edu/depts/upr-intj/pdf/wexlerintro.pdf

2) Ana María López Beltrán, Aplicación de un Modelo Sistemático para Propiciar la Autoeficacia y Modificación de Conducta de los Principiantes en el Proceso de Cortes de Drogas, 78 Rev. Jur. U.P.R. 5 (2009).

http://www.law.arizona.edu/depts/upr-intj/pdf/lopez.pdf

This past week, a committee of lawyers called "Lawyers as Peacemakers, Lawyers as Problemsolvers" was host to David Wexler. David spoke to a group of attorneys on the concept of therapeutic jurisprudence. The good thing is that many of us practice law in some fashion therapeutically; we just didn't know it.

As a legal aid lawyer, part of my practice has always been to be mindful of the particular challenges people in poverty experience.