"Law and Neuroscience in the United States"

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"Law and Neuroscience in the United States"  
INTERNATIONAL NEUROLAW: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS, p. 349, T.M. Spranger, ed., Springer-Verlag, 2012
Vanderbilt Public Law Research Paper No. 1-5

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OWEN D. JONES, Vanderbilt University - Law School & Dept. of Biological Sciences
FRANCIS X. SHEN, Tulane University Law School & The Murphy Institute

Neuroscientific evidence is increasingly reaching United States courtrooms in a number of legal contexts. And the emerging field of Law and Neuroscience is being built on a foundation that joins: a) rapidly developing technologies and techniques of neuroscience; b) quickly expanding legal scholarship on the implications of neuroscience; and c) neuroscientific research designed specifically to explore legally relevant topics. 

Despite the sharply increasing interest in neuroscientific evidence, it remains unclear how the legal system – at the courtroom, regulatory, and policy levels – will resolve the many challenges that new neuroscience applications raise. 

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This chapter – part of an edited volume surveying neurolaw in 18 countries – provides an overview of notable neurolaw developments in the United States through 2011. The chapter proceeds in six parts. Section 1 introduces the development of law and neuroscience in the U.S. Section 2 then considers several of the evidentiary contexts in which neuroscientific evidence has been, and likely will be, introduced. Sections 3 and 4 discuss the implications of neuroscience for the criminal and civil systems, respectively. Section 5 reviews three special topics: lie detection, memory, and legal decision making. Section 6 concludes with brief thoughts about the future of law and neuroscience in the United States.