ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the changes in legal doctrine, the present state of affairs in the theories of legal decision-making, and some possible future directions. It limits the discussion to a consideration of facts in criminal cases. Psychological models of decision-making in criminal cases share a characteristic that is peculiar in the field of psychology: all are both descriptive and prescriptive in nature. In the absence of robust figures on the diagnostic value of pieces of evidence, judges and juries cannot but step in and guess. Story models are based on the notion that stories give meaning to behaviour of individuals, or as Bruner puts it, are 'concerned with the explication of human intentions in the context of action'. The work by Pennington and Hastie and our work on anchored narratives take a story as presented by the prosecution as a starting point. There are important differences between the story of the police and the story at trial.
