Mission
The mission of the Culture, Conflict, and Law (CC&L) lab is to leverages social psychological theory and empirical research methodology to help inform legal scholars’ and policymakers’ understanding of how human psychology affects policy and legal judgment and decision-making in civil justice and criminal justice contexts. Broadly speaking, we adopt a "human-centered" approach that centers empirical justice research on how everyday people experience and engage with the legal system. Our goal is to provide the empirical research needed to increase access to justice, thereby reducing the justice gap.
Approach
The CC&L lab produces empirically informed scholarship relying on both quantitative and qualitative methodology. Our approach to this work integrates three underlying principles:
- Justice and public policy related research benefits from a convergence approach to research. We integrate diverse areas of knowledge, methods, and expertise to generate novel ideas for how solve problems and address important and challenging issues in legal contexts.
- Empirical research should embrace methodological rigor and appropriate open-science practices. The CC&L lab strives to produce high quality empirical research. Because we often work in novel contexts, we often develop and validate new measures and paradigm as part of our research. When appropriate, we implement open science practices, including preregistration of protocols and analyses, as well as sharing materials and data.
- Society benefits when law-psychology researchers collaborate with the people impacted by the research. Our lab collaborates with local communities, legal practitioners, and policymakers to produce meaningful scholarship that can have a positive impact.
Areas of Interest
Please visit the Research Page to learn more about our specific areas of interest including access to justice, alternative dispute resolution, and restorative justice.
The CC&L lab is a part of the Law-Psychology Program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln.
Dr. Votruba will not be accepting a graduate student for the 2025-2026 academic year.
If you are an undergraduate at UNL interested in being a part of the CC&L lab, please send an email that includes a current resume/CV and a brief statement of interest to Dr. Ashley Votruba and Casey Tisdale.
