Content
I primarily study the way in which the law intervenes—and sometimes interferes—in family and individual decision making. That includes issues about raising children (e.g., parental responsibility laws and blaming parents), adult children caring for aging parents, and Constitutionally protected rights within the criminal and juvenile justice systems.
A few of my papers are available on University of Nebraska Digital Commons.
And if it does not work out, there'll never be any doubt, that the pleasure was worth all the pain.
Jimmy Buffett
Research Areas
Parental Responsibility/Parental Involvement
Parental responsibility laws hold parents legally responsible when their children commit crimes. Every state has some form of these laws and more and more municipalities are enacting some form of them. I'm currently working on writing several manuscripts that examine how and why people attribute responsibility to and blame parents when their children commit crimes.
Elder Care Giving and Other Elder Issues
When families decide to care for their aging family members both the elder and the family member have a number of decisions to make. We are examining how people make these decisions and other end-of-life decisions. We're also interested in elder autonomy issues and ageism.
Fourth Amendment and Reasonable Expectations of Privacy
The Fourth Amendment protects against intrusions into unreasonable expectations of privacy, but the law is not clear regarding what makes an expectation reasonable. We are using various social cognitive theories, including embodied cognition, to examine an individual's expectations of privacy.
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Graduate student, Emma Marshall, presenting at the American Psychology-Law Society Legal Workshop.