American religious life is unique among Western democracies: It is unusually diverse, and it currently contains seemingly paradoxical trends toward both growing fundamentalism and increasing non-belief. Unlike other demographic characteristics (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender), jurors’ religion is generally “fair game” during voir dire. This talk will provide an overview of the legal, psychological, and practical aspects of jurors’ religion in the trial context. From a legal perspective, which aspects (if any) of a juror’s religion can be used as a basis for peremptory challenges? From a psychological perspective, which aspects (if any) of jurors’ religion predict their verdict preferences, how strong is the relationship, and to what extent does it vary as a function of variables like case type? And from a practical perspective, how can religion be measured most effectively? The talk will provide a broad overview of these questions with selected empirical data.
Brian Bornstein is Professor of Psychology and Courtesy Professor of Law at UNL. He started at the university in 2000. He served as Director of the Law-Psychology program from 2015-2017 and is currently a member of both the Law-Psychology and Social-Cognitive programs. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, and a Master of Legal Studies from the University of Nebraska in 2001. Dr. Bornstein's research efforts focus primarily on how juries make decisions and the reliability of eyewitness memory. Additional areas of focus are in applying decision-making principles to everyday judgment tasks, as in medical decision making and distributive and procedural justice. He teaches courses on human memory, psychology and law, decision making, and history of psychology at the graduate and undergraduate levels.