Neurolaw
[2] Major areas of current neurolaw research include courtroom applications, legal implications of neuroscience findings, and how neuroscience-related jurisdiction can be created and applied.
[3][4] Despite the growing interest in neurolaw and its potential applications, the legal realm recognizes the substantial opportunity for misuse and is proceeding cautiously with novel research outcomes.
[2][5][6][7] The term neurolaw was first coined by J. Sherrod Taylor in 1991, in a Neuropsychology journal article analyzing the role of psychologists and lawyers in the criminal justice system.
[10] 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.
[11] SciLaw, as the organization is known, seeks to leverage neuroscience, law, ethics, programming, and data science to analyze policies and develop solutions to advance the criminal justice system.
Their stated goal is to 'steer social policy in an evidenced-based manner, thereby reducing rates of incarceration and providing innovative options for improving the criminal justice system in a cost effective and humane way'.
Primarily, J. Sherrod Taylor's book, Neurolaw: Brain and Spinal Cord Injury (1997), which was used as a resource for attorneys to properly introduce medical jargon into the courtroom and to further develop the implications of neuroscience on litigation.
[16] This United States Supreme Court case resulted in what is now known as Daubert Standard, which sets rules regarding the use of scientific evidence in the courtroom.
[2] In light of this information and its potential applications, the legal system seeks to create a balance between punishment and penalties based on the ability to predict additional criminal activity.
[3] The Center for Science & Law has developed a suite of mobile and gamified NeuroCognitive Risk Assessments (NCRA)[21][22][23] to help steer people to the proper post-conviction rehabilitation programs by harnessing what drives individual decision making.
By understanding individual differences in aggression, empathy, decision making, and impulsivity -- without reference to race -- the group states they can build better and fairer inroads to rehabilitation.
Holding consistent with their mission to "advance justice", the NCRA does not collect race data making for a more fair and unbiased assessment.
During the middle of the 20th century many courts, through the Durham Rules and the American Law Institute Model Penal Code, regarded impaired volition as legitimate grounds for the insanity defense.
However, when John Hinckley was acquitted due to insanity in 1982, a reversal of this opinion occurred, which spurred a narrowing definition of mental illness.
[24] Injuries or illnesses that lead to a persistent vegetative state have come to the forefront of many ethical, legal, and scientific issues regarding brain death.
The woman was declared to be in a vegetative state; after five months she continued to be unresponsive, but brain pattern measurements indicated normal sleep and wake cycles.
This positive response revealed potential for medical imaging to be used to understand the implications of brain death, and to help answer legal, scientific, and ethical questions pertaining to individuals in vegetative states.
[27] The potential to significantly improve one's concentration, memory, or cognition through drug-use has raised numerous questions on the legality of these substances, and their appropriateness in everyday life.
Analogous to the controversy over the use of anabolic steroids in professional sports, many high schools and universities are wary of students eventually using nootropics to artificially boost academic performance.
[25] There is potential to use fMRI evidence as a more advanced form of lie detection, particularly in identifying the regions of the brain involved in truth telling, deception, and false memories.
However, there are limitations to how much brain imaging can distinguish between truths and deceptions because these regions are common areas of executive control function; It is difficult to tell if the activation seen is due to the lie told, or something unrelated.
Controversy over the science behind fMRI lie detection entered a federal courtroom in 2010 with a Daubert hearing concerning its admissibility in a criminal trial.
[39][40] Neurolaw techniques and policies are slowly entering the legal system due to professional and general public skepticism about its validity.
In the United States, brain scan results have been increasingly utilized during the sentencing phase of trials, with the rate of cases involving neuroscience evidence doubling from 2006 to 2009.
Although the civilian court system is reluctant to use unproven technologies, the military's future use of them may generate controversy over the possible innocence or guilt of enemy combatants.
Due to this ambiguity and the potential of technology misuse, it has become increasingly pressing to address the regulations and ethics needed for neuroscience research.
Due to glorified depictions of forensics labs on popular television shows, brain imaging has faced criticism for having a "CSI effect".
American professor of law and psychology Stephen J. Morse described the abuse of neuroscience in courtrooms with a pseudo-disease he called "brain overclaim syndrome".
In the future, judges must decide on the relevance and validity of neurological evidence so that it can enter the courtroom, and juries must be open to understanding scientific concepts but not be too willing to place all faith in neuroscience.
