Introduction
Courts have always depended on human perception. A judge or juror listens to a witness, observes demean our, studies documents, and compares competing narratives. The law often speaks as if facts are simply found, but adjudication is never a purely mechanical exercise. Facts are perceived, remembered, framed, and weighed by human decision-makers. That is why the design of evidence matters.
Cognitive jurisprudence starts from this modest premise. It treats legal reasoning not only as a matter of doctrine, but also as a human cognitive process shaped by attention, memory, emotion, bias, and mental shortcuts. This perspective is especially important now because evidence is no longer confined to testimony, documents, photographs, or video. Increasingly, legal actors are experimenting with virtual reality, augmented reality, three-dimensional scene modelling, and AI-assisted reconstructions.
These tools promise genuine value. A judge may understand a spatial relationship more clearly through a three-dimensional model than through a...
