Book Review: Psychological Science in the Courtroom: Consensus and Controversy

• Date: 01 September 2011
• Author: Eugene Borgida,Erik J. Girvan
• Published date: 01 September 2011
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016811416001
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

The court’s majority opinion in Smith changed all of this. Not only did the justices rule against an

employee’s freedom of exercise in an unemployment case—a first—but Justice Scalia’s majority

opinion, suggested that it was not the function of the court to hear every individual challenge to

religious freedom. Rather, ‘‘their [religious minorities] only hope lay in the state legislatures and

Congress, which could, if they chose, protect religious belief’’ (p. 201).

This book is an exhaustive account of not just this case and the constitutionality of free exercise,

but also of the players involved—Al Smith and Galen Black, the peyotists and drug counselors

whose employment termination became the basis for the case, as well as Dave Frohmayer, former

Oregon Attorney General, gubernatorial candidate and President of the University of Oregon.

Through detailed interviews, historical research, and legal reasoning, Epps details every aspect of

Smith from the original motivations of the plaintiffs to stare decisis, its legal precedent. Along the

way, Epps draws the reader into a history of the broad and multifaceted Native American Church;

Oregon’s remarkably different take on religious freedom versus that of the federal government;

ideological shifts on the U.S. Supreme Court and their impact on subsequent rulings; and finally,

the checks and balances war that breaks out between the Court and Congress following Smith.

Epps, a law professor by profession, clearly enjoys the drama this case provides and he embraces

his role like that of an indigenous storyteller. As much as Peyote v. the State is a serious discussion of

how religious freedom has been framed by the courts, it is also a vehicle for Epps to tell stories, fill in

the blanks on gaps in the historical record of Smith and also provide an avenue for him to share

his beliefs about the current makeup of the Court, as well as in years past. Epps’ research is so

thorough that the reader is exposed to a plethora of characters that usually do not make their way

into popular retelling of the case. These range from Stanley Smart, the Native American ‘‘road man’’

who first introduced Al Smith to the ways of the Native American Church (among them the use of

‘‘Grandfather Peyote’’); to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh aka Osho, the Indian holy man who moved his

international base of operations from India to Oregon and created a political nightmare for the state.

But Epps’ enthusiasm also comes with a price. Sometimes, his character descriptions border on

the sophomoric and take away from the seriousness of the subject. So, when he describes Chief

Justice Earl Warren as a ‘‘genial former politician’’(p. 105) and Associate Justice William Brennan

a ‘‘jovial Irish-American imp’’ (p. 105), one is left questioning his choice of words. This is most

resonant later in the book when he lays into Justice Scalia and his breaking with precedent. Epps

refers to him as ‘‘the faithful Catholic and father of nine ... an unlikely antichrist’’ (p. 207).

In conclusion, this is a fine book and a detailed study of the Native American church as well as the

evolution of claims of religious freedoms in the United States at th e federal level and also for state s.

With that said, however, it is not an appropriate text in the field of criminal justice because of the

limited applicability. The ideal audience would be teachers and students in political science and

public law.

J. Skeem, K. S. Douglas, and S. O. Lilienfeld (Eds.)

Psychological Science in the Courtroom: Consensus and Controversy New York, NY: The Guilford Press, 2009. xiv,

418 pp. $55.00. ISBN: 978-1606232514

Reviewed by: Eugene Borgida and Erik J. Girvan, University of Minnesota: Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0734016811416001

Psychological Science in the Courtroom: Consensus and Controversy (edited by Jennifer L. Skeem,

Kevin S. Douglas, and Scott O. Lilienfeld) offers a comprehensive, critical overview of the most

prominent research topics in forensic psychology. The stated goal of the volume is to serve as an

366 Criminal Justice Review 36(3)