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Posted by NELB Staff on 06/23/2017 at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Posted by NELB Staff on 06/20/2017 at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by NELB Staff on 06/15/2017 at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Posted by NELB Staff on 06/15/2017 at 09:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Recently posted on SSRN: "How Should Justice Policy Treat Young Offenders?"
BJ CASEY, Yale University - Department of Psychology
RICHARD J. BONNIE, University of Virginia - School of Law
ANDRE DAVIS, US Court of Appeals - Fourth Circuit
DAVID L. FAIGMAN, University of California Hastings College of the Law
MORRIS B. HOFFMAN, Second Judicial District Court Judge, State of Colorado
OWEN D. JONES, Vanderbilt University - Law School & Dept. of Biological Sciences
READ MONTAGUE, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University - Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute
STEPHEN MORSE, University of Pennsylvania Law School
MARCUS E. RAICHLE, Washington University School of Medicine
JENNIFER A. RICHESON, Yale University - Department of Psychology
ELIZABETH S. SCOTT, Columbia University - Law School
LAURENCE STEINBERG, Temple University
KIM A. TAYLOR-THOMPSON, New York University School of Law
ANTHONY D. WAGNER, Stanford University - Psychology
The justice system in the United States has long recognized that juvenile offenders are not the same as adults, and has tried to incorporate those differences into law and policy. But only in recent decades have behavioral scientists and neuroscientists, along with policymakers, looked rigorously at developmental differences, seeking answers to two overarching questions: Are young offenders, purely by virtue of their immaturity, different from older individuals who commit crimes? And, if they are, how should justice policy take this into account?
A growing body of research on adolescent development now confirms that teenagers are indeed inherently different from adults, not only in their behaviors, but also (and of course relatedly) in the ways their brains function. These findings have influenced a series of Supreme Court decisions relating to the treatment of adolescents, and have led legislators and other policymakers across the country to adopt a range of developmentally informed justice policies.
New research is showing distinct changes in the brains of young adults, ages 18 to 21, suggesting that they too may be immature in ways that are relevant to justice policy. This knowledge brief from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience considers the implications of this new research.
Posted by NELB Staff on 06/14/2017 at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Recently posted to SSRN: "Dynamic Rationality"
STEPHANIE PLAMONDON BAIR, Brigham Young University J. Reuben Clark Law School
In 1998, Christine Jolls, Cass Sunstein, and Richard Thaler published A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics, one of the most important pieces of scholarship in decades. Their Article famously proposes a departure from the classical law and economics approach to legal analysis. Breaking from classical law and economics’ rational actor construct, the authors apply empirical insights about human behavior to introduce the concept of a boundedly rational actor limited by cognitive constraints. Over the past two decades, the behavioral law and economics approach, with its focus on the boundedly rational actor, has contributed needed realism to legal analyses.
Unfortunately, the current approach to behavioral law and economics is incomplete. Indeed, sometimes it even conflicts with empirical lessons about how the brain actually works. In particular, rationality is not exogenous to policy, but instead has a dynamic character that can be molded in long-lasting ways over time by specific laws and policies. By overlooking the dynamic nature of rationality, behavioral law and economics cannot reach its full potential, and in fact, may harm the very people it is intended to benefit. A policy enacted to preserve consumer autonomy, for instance, may actually undermine autonomous decision-making in the long term.
In this Article, I take the first step in remedying this oversight. Drawing on the insights of neuroscience, I explain why rationality is endogenous and dynamic and what this means for behavioral law and economics. Working from examples in advertising and criminal law, I explain that dynamic rationality can and should be accounted for. Doing so will increase the prescriptive and normative power of behavioral law and economics and prevent policies from being introduced that undermine rather than advance social welfare.
Posted by NELB Staff on 06/13/2017 at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Recently posted to SSRN: "Can Neuroscience Contribute to Practical Ethics? A Critical Review and Discussion of the Methodological and Translational Challenges of the Neuroscience of Ethics"
ERIC RACINE, Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal
VELJKO DUBLJEVIĆ, Independent
BERNARD BAERTSCHI, University of Geneva
RALF J. JOX, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
JULIA F. CHRISTENSEN, City University London
MICHELE FARISCO, Uppsala University - Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics
FABRICE JOTTERAND, Medical College of Wisconsin
GUY KAHANE, University of Oxford – Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics
SABINE MULLER, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Neuroethics is an interdisciplinary field that arose in response to novel ethical challenges posed by advances in neuroscience. Historically, neuroethics has provided an opportunity to synergize different disciplines, notably proposing a two‐way dialogue between an ‘ethics of neuroscience’ and a ‘neuroscience of ethics’. However, questions surface as to whether a ‘neuroscience of ethics’ is a useful and unified branch of research and whether it can actually inform or lead to theoretical insights and transferable practical knowledge to help resolve ethical questions. In this article, we examine why the neuroscience of ethics is a promising area of research and summarize what we have learned so far regarding its most promising goals and contributions. We then review some of the key methodological challenges which may have hindered the use of results generated thus far by the neuroscience of ethics. Strategies are suggested to address these challenges and improve the quality of research and increase neuroscience’s usefulness for applied ethics and society at large. Finally, we reflect on potential outcomes of a neuroscience of ethics and discuss the different strategies that could be used to support knowledge transfer to help different stakeholders integrate knowledge from the neuroscience of ethics.
Posted by NELB Staff on 06/09/2017 at 09:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Recently posted to SSRN: "Respect for Autonomy in Light of Neuropsychiatry"
SABINE MULLER, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
Bioethics needs an elaborated concept of autonomy based on empirical knowledge about the prerequisites of the capacity of autonomy. Whereas Beauchamp and Childress, and many other bioethicists have discussed social influences on the capacity of autonomy in depth, neurobiological influences have received less attention. A comprehensive concept of autonomy should consider both social and biological factors that can diminish the capacity of autonomy. This article focuses on neurobiological influences that can reduce the capacity of autonomy. The thesis of this article is that the integration of neuropsychiatric knowledge into the concept of autonomy is essential for (1) evaluating demands for harmful medical treatments which might be caused by a brain disease, and (2) deciding on involuntary treatments of patients who suffer from substantial lack of autonomy due to neuropsychiatric disorders. Diametrically opposed to such a comprehensive concept of the capacity of autonomy is the concept of ‘liberty of illness’. In Germany, this concept is supported not only by anti‐psychiatric groups but also by the Federal Constitutional Court. Several real cases demonstrate how the brain can be ‘hijacked’ by parasites, antibodies or technical devices. Applying the concept of ‘liberty of illness’ to persons whose decision‐making capacity is severely affected by neuropsychiatric disorders is cynical. These patients neither chose their disease nor would refuse effective treatment if their will was not disturbed by the disease. Respect for autonomy should be understood as the positive obligation to save, support or restore the biological prerequisites of the capacity for autonomous decision‐making.
Posted by NELB Staff on 06/07/2017 at 09:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Recently posted to SSRN: "Mind and Rights: Neuroscience, Philosophy and the Foundations of Legal Justice"
MATTHIAS MAHLMANN, Chair of Legal Theory, Legal Sociology and International Public Law
The main question explored is: What is actually the relationship between human thought, its structure and exercise, and the idea of human rights, which is surely among the most important products of human thinking?
The first question will be: Why does the theory of mind matter for ethics and law? Second, the concept or idea of a human right as a subclass of moral and legal subjective rights used will be outlined and clarified to answer the question: What precisely are we talking about? Third, the question Where do rights come from? will occupy the attention just long enough to substantially understand why an answer to one of the two currently particularly interesting fundamental forms of human rights’ revisionism, the historical, genealogical attack on human rights, leads necessarily beyond the limits of human rights history in the deep waters of the epistemology and ontology of human rights and thus to those kinds of problems these remarks intend to explore. Fourth, the question Why are rights justified? will be considered. Fifth, after having sufficiently prepared the ground by the preceding remarks, the core issue of these reflections can be addressed: What is, after all, the importance of the theory of mind for the project of human rights? Here the second fundamental challenge to the idea of human rights will be discussed. This attack stems from the quarters of today’s neuroscientific neo-emotivism, which is interesting in itself and has the advantage that the critique of this form of human rights revisionism has considerable heuristic merits for a constructive account of the theory of mind and the foundations of human rights. How a theory of human rights could draw from the theory of mind, and more concretely from a mentalist account of ethics and law, to provide such a constructive account is the final perspective to be explored.
Posted by NELB Staff on 06/05/2017 at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)