Psychiatric diagnoses gain legal power when jurors accept their underlying medical metatheory

Evidence

Sometimes, as I have already noted, the brain does intrude into the mind, and a tumor or hormonal dysfunction causes deviant and sometimes harmful behavior. As competent defense lawyers have long realized, sometimes a diagnostic label can be made to serve the same apparent explanatory function, although sometimes spuriously so to my mind. Much of the debate around certain diagnostic categories, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, stems from the fact that when they are used as legal defenses, lawyers can lead jurors to accept the “medical” metatheory underlying the particular diagnosis in question. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3888

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to how diagnostic labels function as explanations in adversarial legal contexts, echoing research on expert testimony influence on juries.