ABSTRACT
Therapeutic jurisprudence-the study of the role of the law as a therapeutic agent-is an interdisciplinary enterprise designed to bring insights from the clinical behavioral sciences into the development of the law (Wexler & Winick, 1996). The therapeutic jurisprudence perspective suggests that the law itself can be seen to function as a kind of therapist or therapeutic agent. Legal rules, legal procedures, and the roles of legal actors (such as lawyers, judges, and often therapists) constitute social forces that, like it or not, often produce therapeutic or antitherapeutic consequences. Therapeutic jurisprudence proposes that we be sensitive to those consequences, rather than ignore them, and that we ask whether the law's antitherapeutic consequences can be reduced, and its therapeutic consequences enhanced, without subordinating due process and justice values.
