Shauhin Talesh Publishes Article on Mental Health Court Judges in Depaul Law Review

The DePaul Law Review has just published “Mental Health Court Judges as ‘Dynamic Risk Managers’: A New Conceptualization of the Role of Judges,” (57 Depaul L. Rev. 93 (2007) by Shauhin Talesh, a second year JSP Ph.D student. Talesh’s article attempts to illuminate how concepts of risk management are becoming more a part of the role of judges in problem solving courts (and in particular, mental health courts). More importantly, this analysis begins to move scholarly debate away from the traditional debate of the judge’s role as a “passive, neutral arbiter” versus “activist,” and instead toward thinking closely about how risk management approaches by judges play a growing role in the criminal process and what the potential effects of such an approach are. This article was an outgrowth of 2 JSP courses Talesh took in his first year at JSP: Courts and Social Policy (taught by Malcolm Feeley) and Jurisprudence of Risk (taught by Jonathan Simon & Charles Weisselburg).