The contributors to this volume consider the societal and political implications of our new found knowledge from the neurosciences. The text applies developments in brain science to debates over criminal responsibility, cooperation and punishment, deception, moral and legal judgement.

In Minds, Brains, and Law, Michael S. Pardo and Dennis Patterson analyze questions that lie at the core of implementing neuroscientific research and technology within the legal system. They examine the arguments favoring increased use of neuroscience in law, the scientific evidence available for the reliability of neuroscientific evidence in legal proceedings, and the integration of neuroscientific research into substantive legal doctrines. This paperback edition contain a new Preface covering developments in this subject since the hardcover edition published in 2013.

The past 20 years have seen unparalleled advances in neurobiology, with findings from neuroscience being used to shed light on a range of human activities - many historically the province of those in the humanities and social sciences - aesthetics, emotion, consciousness, music. Applying this new knowledge to law seems a natural development - the making, considering, and enforcing of law of course rests on mental processes. However, where some of those activities can be studied with a certain amount of academic detachment, what we discover about the brain has considerable implications for how we consider and judge those who follow or indeed flout the law - with inevitable social and political consequences. There are real issues that the legal system will face as neurobiological studies continue to relentlessly probe the human mind - the motives for our actions, our decision making processes, and such issues as free will and responsibility. This volume represents a first serious attempt to address questions of law as reflecting brain activity, emphasizing that it is the organization and functioning of the brain that determines how we enact and obey laws. It applies the most recent developments in brain science to debates over criminal responsibility, cooperation and punishment, deception, moral and legal judgment, property, evolutionary psychology, law and economics, and decision-making by judges and juries. Written and edited by leading specialists from a range of disciplines, the book presents a groundbreaking and challenging new look at human behaviour.

Bringing together the latest work from leading scholars in this emerging and vibrant subfield of law, this book examines the philosophical issues that inform the intersection between law and neuroscience.

There have been extraordinary developments in the field of neuroscience in recent years, sparking a number of discussions within the legal field. This book studies the various interactions between neuroscience and the world of law, and explores how neuroscientific findings could affect some fundamental legal categories and how the law should be implemented in such cases. The book is divided into three main parts. Starting with a general overview of the convergence of neuroscience and law, the first part outlines the importance of their continuous interaction, the challenges that neuroscience poses for the concepts of free will and responsibility, and the peculiar characteristics of a “new” cognitive liberty. In turn, the second part addresses the phenomenon of cognitive and moral enhancement, as well as the uses of neurotechnology and their impacts on health, self-determination and the concept of being human. The third and last part investigates the use of neuroscientific findings in both criminal and civil cases, and seeks to determine whether they can provide valuable evidence and facilitate the assessment of personal responsibility, helping to resolve cases. The book is the result of an interdisciplinary dialogue involving jurists, philosophers, neuroscientists, forensic medicine specialists, and scholars in the humanities; further, it is intended for a broad readership interested in understanding the impacts of scientific and technological developments on people’s lives and on our social systems.

This landmark publication offers a unique comparative and interdisciplinary study of criminal insanity and neuroscience. Criminal law theories and ideologies which underpin the regulation of criminal insanity have always been the subject of controversy. The history of criminal insanity is characterised by conceptual and empirical tension between two disciplinary realms: the law and the mind sciences. The authors in this anthology explore in depth the state of the art of legal insanity and the numerous intricate, fascinating, pioneering and sophisticated questions raised by the integration of different criminal law and behaviour theories, diverse disciplines and methodologies, in a genuinely interdisciplinary perspective. This volume will serve as a practical guide for the comparative legal scholar and the judge, as well as stimulating scholarly reading for the neuroscientist, the social scientist and the philosopher with interdisciplinary scientific interests.

Adopting a broadly compatibilist approach, this volume's authors argue that the behavioral and mind sciences do not threaten the moral foundations of legal responsibility. Rather, these sciences provide fresh insight into human agency and updated criteria as well as powerful diagnostic and intervention tools for assessing and altering minds.