Title
Avani Mehta Sood

Department
Berkeley Law


Faculty URL
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/avani-sood/

Email
amsood@law.berkeley.edu

Phone
(510) 642-7341


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Research Expertise and Interest
legal analysis, psychological theory

Research Description
Professor Avani Mehta Sood is a social psychologist and legal scholar who joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2013.?She teaches Criminal Law, Evidence, and a seminar on Law & Psychology.?
In her scholarship, Sood combines legal analysis with psychology theory and experimental, observational, and survey methodologies to study how legal decision-makers assess and apply evidence, law, and criminal liability.?Her work empirically investigates and addresses misalignments between legal expectations of how laws/procedures operate and the socio-cognitive realities of human decision-making, with the aim of improving the accuracy and fairness of the criminal justice system.???
Sood’s research has uncovered novel dimensions of deep-rooted legal doctrines and practices—shedding new empirical light, for example, on how jurors are likely to construe legal standards for criminal attempt; how judges apply the exclusionary rule in search-and-seizure cases; the psychological malleability of “harm” in criminal law; and the effects of verdict format in criminal trials.?In addition, Sood has experimentally studied the psychology of severe interrogation and has written on issues of gender justice and international human rights law.?Her work has been published in leading law reviews and peer-reviewed journals, including the?Stanford Law Review,?Virginia Law Review,?Harvard Law Review Forum,?Georgetown Law Journal,?Annual Review of Law and Social Science,?California Law Review,?Journal of Experimental Social Psychology,?Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and?Theoretical Inquiries in Law.??