Here is the latest installment in this series of posts:
E. Fruehwald, "An Introduction to Behavioral Biology for Legal Scholars"
Abstract:
Over the last ten years, behavioral biology has become an important tool for legal scholars. In fact, an informal survey rated behavioral biology as the second most important development in the legal academy since 2000. This paper will present the basics of behavioral biology for legal scholars. After giving an introduction to brain science, it will discuss such topics as the selfish gene and reciprocal altruism, universals, sexual selection, morality, culture, and the social contract.
D. Faust et al., "The Admissibility of Behavioral Science Evidence in the Courtroom"
Abstract:
Starting with the Daubert case, courtroom rules and guides regulating the admissibility of scientific evidence have undergone major revisions over the past 10 to 15 years. We review these changes and current legal rules and guides, in particular their impact on the admission of behavioral sciences evidence and testimony. We examine commonly intended meanings, conceptualizations, and language use relating to science and the admission of evidence within the legal system and their relation to more familiar terms and concepts within the behavioral sciences, identifying points of continuity and discontinuity. We then review illustrative legal cases involving challenges to the admission of psychological and psychiatric evidence and their implications for mental health professionals. Finally, we offer a framework for conceptualizing and prioritizing key legal criteria for determining admissibility and appraising standing on these factors within the mental health field. Increased mutual understanding between psychology and law should further enhance productive interfaces between the disciplines and add to the many instances in which the proper use of science in the courtroom has facilitated fair resolution of legal conflicts.
N. Farahany, "A Neurological Foundation for Legal Free Will" (abstract only)
Abstract:
Neuroscience provides a new lens to examine the concept of freedom underlying moral and legal responsibility. The difference between an eye blink and an eye wink, once unknowable, may now be studied with emerging technologies from neuroscience. Recent scholarship integrating neuroscience into debates over moral and legal responsibility, however, largely concede that criminal law must fundamentally alter its view of human actions and of human behavior and restructure its concept of responsibility to conform to these new technologies. This paper demonstrates that, to the contrary, research into the neural processes involved in choice, and cutting edge neuro-technology, such as brain-machine interface, may offer new insights into human agency and responsibility. These insights bolster existing theories of freedom of choice and freedom of action, lending credence to concept of agency underlying both. The grounding neuroscience offers to agency-based concepts of freedom confers an immediate benefit to institutions built upon presumptions of human agency, but thin in their existing defense. This is particularly true for the concept of legal free will underpinning responsibility in criminal law. Legal free will has traditionally relied upon consequentialist or compatibilist justifications for responsibility, rather than a theoretically stronger account of freedom. Rather than eschewing theoretical free will as unnecessary to criminal responsibility, legal free will could embrace advances in neuroscience to supplement a theory of freedom that comports with moral responsibility and provide it with a more robust foundation.
A. Torrance, "The Evolution and Development in Biolaw"
Abstract:
Biolaw has come of age as an academic discipline. This rapidly growing legal discipline possesses a Janus nature that encompasses both the law of biology and the biology of law. Advances in the biological sciences, such as genetics, biochemistry, cell biology, synthetic biology, biological engineering, reproductive biology, embryology, developmental biology, systems biology, evolutionary biology, ecology, behavioral ecology, ethology, and neurobiology continually challenge both society and the laws that attempt to order, regulate, and protect it. Biolaw combines the use of biological science to describe, analyze, and improve the law with legal analysis of biological science, its institutions, and its societal implications. It integrates insights from such biologically-informed research areas as law and genetics, law and neuroscience, reproductive law, behavioral economics, cognitive psychology, law and biotechnology, biotechnology patent law, neuroethics, and biodiversity law. Building on early advocacy of the field by academics such as Hank Greely and June Carbone, the field is currently experiencing a renaissance in interest both inside and outside the academy. Indicia of its new prominence include a large and growing constituency among legal academics, academic conferences (i.e., Law and the Life Sciences, held in 2007 at the University of Louisville School of Law; Biolaw: Law at the Frontiers of Biology, held annually at the University of Kansas School of Law in 2007, 2008, and 2009), weblogs (e.g., Biolaw: Law and the Life Sciences), a scholarly listserv (i.e., the Biolaw Listserv), and high attendance at Biolaw “open programs” at the 2008, 2009, and 2010 American Association of Law Schools annual meetings. Perhaps the most official recognition of biolaw as a legal discipline is the proposed creation of an official AALS Biolaw Section. As advances in the biological sciences increasingly challenge the vocabulary, legal regulation, and understandings of the role of biology in society, and the law increasingly attends to the regulation of these challenges, biolaw is likely to emulate the growth of cyberlaw as an important and prominent scholarly discipline within the legal academy.
B. Schulz, "Freedom of Will and Criminal Law" (article is in German)
Abstract:
This text goes further into the fundamental questions, i.e. how far feelings, thinking and decisions are exclusively determined by the causal rules and neuronal processes, whether there is still a possibility for subjectivity and free will, and what impact the progress of modern brain research has on our image of humanity, particularly on the judgement of criminals. Generally, the text tries to evaluate this subject from a neutral and objective position. The first part, on the one hand, gives a review of cognition of the neurosciences and definitions of terms such as “free will” that the medical research provides. On the other hand, it describes theories proposed in philosophy and criminal law, e.g. those regarding free will and the responsibility of the individual. In the second part, controversial issues resulting from the above are emphasized while perspectives and possible consequences for the integration of these polar ideas are outlined. While doing this, all the views and concepts that are illustrated are reflected in the light of the findings and theories of brain research. Further, the question is raised whether the debate over free will is only a problem in the German Strafrechtswissenschaft or as well in the common law system. In conclusion, taking the results from the first parts as a basis, there is a subjective appraisal and an outlook of subsequent development.
As always, happy reading!