Law and psychology.

The study of psychology and law, specifically decision making by a jury, is a subset of social psychology. A person might be sitting in their living room watching television when, all of a sudden, a police officer knocks on their door, asks them to step outside, and informs them that they are being arrested on suspicion of burglary. The person claims that they are innocent, but six months later is on trial for this crime in front of a jury. Should it make any difference to the jury whether the accused has a good or bad character, whether they are attractive or unattractive, or whether they are white, Black, Asian, or Latino? The US legal system is designed to yield objective, unbiased decisions based on a set of rules and procedures intended to focus on evidence presented at the trial. Yet Clarence Darrow, one of America’s most famous lawyers, bluntly saw it otherwise: "Jurymen seldom convict a person they like, or acquit one that they dislike. The main work of the trial lawyer is to make a jury like his client, or, at least, to feel sympathy for him; facts regarding the crime are relatively unimportant."