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Neurolaw


Neurolaw is an emerging field of interdisciplinary study that explores the effects of discoveries in neuroscience on legal rules and standards. Drawing from neuroscience, philosophy, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and criminology, neurolaw practitioners seek to address not only the descriptive and predictive issues of how neuroscience is and will be used in the legal system, but also the normative issues of how neuroscience should and should not be used. The most prominent questions that have emerged from this exploration are as follows: To what extent can a tumor or brain injury alleviate criminal punishment? Can sentencing or rehabilitation regulations be influenced by neuroscience? Who is permitted access to images of a person's brain? Neuroscience is beginning to address these questions in its effort to understand human behavior, and will potentially shape future aspects of legal processes. New insights into the psychology and cognition of the brain have been made available by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These new technologies were a break from the conventional and primitive views of the brain that have been prevalent in the legal system for centuries. Brain imaging has provided a much deeper insight into thought processes, and will have an effect on the law because it contests customary beliefs about mental development. Because the science is still developing and because there is substantial opportunity for misuse, the legal realm recognizes the need to proceed cautiously. Neurolaw proponents are quickly finding means to apply neuroscience to a variety of different contexts. For example, intellectual property could be better evaluated through neuroscience. Major areas of current research include applications in the courtroom, how neuroscience can and should be used legally, and how the law is created and applied.

Neuroscience and the law have interacted over a long history, but interest spiked in the late 1990s. After the term neurolaw was first coined by Sherrod J. Taylor in 1991, scholars from both fields began to network through presentations and dialogs. This led to an increasing pull to publish books, articles, and other literature. The Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research and the Dana Foundation were the first groups to provide funding for the new interdisciplinary field. Parallel to the expansion of neurolaw, an emergence of ethics specifically regarding neuroscience was developing as well. The intersection of neurolaw and ethics was able to be better scrutinized by the initiation of the Law and Neuroscience Project in 2007. The MacArthur Foundation launched Phase I of its project through a $10 million grant in hope of integrating the two fields. The initiative sustained forty projects addressing a multitude of issues, including experimental and theoretical data that will provide further evidence as to how neuroscience may eventually shape the law. This new field of study has also piqued the interests of several universities. Baylor College of Medicine's Initiative on Neuroscience and the Law’s research seeks to research, educate, and make policy change. The University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Neuroscience and Society began in July 2009, and is working towards confronting the social, legal, and ethical inferences of neuroscience.


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