Malcolm Gladwell's Theories In Three Court Cases

On the other hand, some take his theories and use them to impact extremely important and life changing events such as cases in the court of law. In at least three court cases, Gladwell and his books are referenced in expert testimony or to explain what court terms and claims may mean. In US v. Harry, 20 F. Supp. 3d 1196 - Dist. Court, D. New Mexico 2014, for instance, the expert witness, Dr. Roll, is asked what his “opinion is of the section in Blink where Gladwell describes psychologists' study of individuals' faces for the purpose of determining the individual's' underlying emotions”(Google Scholar). Dr. Rolls responds that he does not believe this theory to be accurate and if this is true it would change everything known by psychologists
Smith, 108 F. Supp. 3d 1064 - Dist. Court, D. New Mexico 2015, where a large part of the plaintiff’s claim relied solely on something called the Bright-Line Rule. In this case, “this Bright-Line rule, which is contrary to the law, is more consistent with author Malcolm Gladwell's pop-social-science theories than it is with Fourth Amendment law. Gladwell, largely from anecdotal examples, theorizes that people have the ability to look at another person and make a split-second decision about what that person is thinking, based solely on his or her facial expressions. See Malcolm Gladwell, Blink 197-206 (2005). Gladwell also theorizes that certain levels of stress can allow a person to think and function at optimal levels — usually when a person's heart rate is between 115 and 145 beats per minute — but that if a person is under extreme stress — resulting in a heart rate of over 175 beats per minute — his or her forebrain begins to shut down and there is ‘an absolute breakdown of cognitive processing’”(Google Scholar). In this case, Gladwell is used to explain what the plaintiff is claiming by “Bright-Line rule”. Gladwell directly influenced the plaintiffs motive to bring this case before a court and to ask that their actions are not looked at by the letter of the law in the fourth amendment alone, the right to secure one’s property and require a warrant for the property to be searched, but rather to include other factors as well such as
Giurbino, 649 F. Supp. 2d 980 - Dist. Court, ND California 2009, where the report references Gladwell’s book Dangerous Minds when saying that “the really controversial part of crime analysis is the offender profiling part. Expert witness crime analysis has met with mixed results in court, with offender profiling being the least well-received”(Google Scholar). This quote is talking about trial science, a field in law serving to aid lawyers using physiological profiling. The trouble is that as trial science grows, the jury is less independent in analyzing the case as they are constantly being mentally manipulated to view the same piece of evidence in many different ways. Gladwell points this out, specifically mentioning expert crime analysis testimonies to be viewed weaker as they hold a large bias against the suspect that is easily exposed and can be used by both sides against the other. This observation may change the way court proceedings happen in the future, changing the way both traditional lawyers and the trial scientist approach a court room to argue their cases. In all three of these cases, the court proceeding and explanations behind the actions would be greatly changed if not for these works posted by