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Oct.
9, 2007 -- The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
is bringing together a distinguished group of scientists,
legal scholars, jurists and philosophers from across
the country to help integrate new developments in neuroscience
into the U.S. legal system. The Law and Neuroscience
Project is the first systematic effort to bridge the
fields of law and science in considering how courts
should deal with new brain-scanning techniques as they
apply to matters of law. The Project is supported by
an initial, three-year $10 million MacArthur grant.
Washington
University researcher Marcus Raichle, M.D., professor
of radiology, neurology, neurobiology, psychology and
biomedical engineering, will serve on the Project's
board and co-direct one of its three working groups.
Kent
Syverud, the Ethan A. H. Shepley University Professor
and dean of the Washington University School of Law,
worked with the School of Medicine to develop this project.
"I
am very excited by this grant. Neuroscience research
poses some of the most exciting and challenging ideas
for reform of legal doctrine. I worked to establish
the program in law and neuroscience when I was dean
at Vanderbilt Law School. I know that Dean Larry Shapiro
and Chancellor Mark Wrighton join me in the expectation
that, as at Vanderbilt, this grant will produce greater
cooperation and joint work between Washington University's
law school and medical school."
In
contrast to the historic use of pseudoscientific fads
like phrenology (the study of the shape of the skull)
in the courts, neuroscience's insights into human behavior
come from a solid scientific foundation. But that doesn't
lessen the need to clearly delineate what neuroscience
can and cannot tell us about human behavior, Raichle
emphasizes.
"If
we don't have these kinds of discussions, the insights
neuroscience can offer the courts could get discredited
prematurely," he says. "But we also have to
be careful about applying those insights without getting
caught up in the current fashionable picture of the
brain and suddenly deciding we can tell who's guilty
and who isn't."
"Neuroscience
could have an impact on the legal system that is as
dramatic as DNA testing," MacArthur President Jonathan
Fanton said. "Neuroscientists need to understand
law, and lawyers need to understand neuroscience. The
MacArthur Foundation has a deep and abiding interest
in the application of science to policy and practice,
and particularly in bringing scientific findings to
bear on the practice of law. We hope this ambitious
effort will help to address the difficult legal and
ethical questions that will inevitably and quickly arise
as neuroscience progresses in its ability to understand
and affect behavior."
The
Project is centered at the University of California,
Santa Barbara (UCSB) and involves scientists and legal
scholars from more than two dozen universities nationwide.
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor serves
as honorary chair. UCSB Professor of Psychology Michael
S. Gazzaniga, who also directs the Sage Center for the
Study of the Mind, is the director and principal investigator.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor of Philosophy and
Hardy Professor of Legal Studies at Dartmouth College,
co-directs the project.
Proponents
of neuroscientific evidence say it can help make the
judicial system more accurate and less biased on matters
of guilt, punishment and treatment; on the detection
of lies and bias; and in the prediction of criminal
behavior. They believe the result could be less crime
and fewer people in prisons. Skeptics fear that brain-imaging
technology poses a threat to privacy and notions of
personal responsibility. Both scientists and legal scholars
warn that failing to properly integrate neuroscience
and law could harm the legal system by sending the wrong
people to prison and by creating skepticism about some
of the law's basic assumptions.
Three
working groups of scholars and legal experts will address
the topics of addiction, brain abnormalities, and decision-making
as they relate to complex issues such as criminal responsibility.
Each working group will be directed by a neuroscientist
and a legal expert and include up to 15 neuroscientists,
legal scholars, philosophers and practitioners involved
in the legal system, including a judge. Each group will
review current research, identify gaps in knowledge
and understanding, and develop specific research proposals
that would contribute to improved law, policy, and legal
proceedings.
"Neuroscientific
evidence has already been used to persuade jurors in
sentencing decisions, and courts have admitted brain-imaging
evidence during criminal trials to support pleas of
insanity," said Gazzaniga. "Without a solid,
mutual understanding of each others' fields, lawyers
and judges cannot respond in an informed way to developments
in neuroscience, and scientists cannot properly advise
lawyers or recognize the legal relevance of their current
and future research."
The
working group focused on brain abnormalities will be
chaired by Gazzaniga and Hank Greely, Deane F. and Kate
Edelman Professor of Law, Stanford University. The group
addressing addiction will be headed by Stephen Morse,
Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law and Professor
of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry, University of Pennsylvania,
and Robert Desimone, Professor of Neuroscience and Director
of the McGovern Institute at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology. The working group on decision-making
will be led by Raichle and Owen Jones, Professor of
Law and Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt
University.
In
addition, the Project will support scientific advice
to the legal profession, as well as public and professional
education. Specific activities will range from conferences
and scientific publications to recommendations for judicial
guidelines for handling neuroscientific evidence. Such
evidence includes brain-imaging techniques that have
helped scientists identify which brain regions monitor
behaviors or regulate emotions, and what happens when
these regions are disconnected.
"The
U.S. legal system incorporates assumptions about behavior
that, in some cases, are centuries old and based on
common sense and culture," said Sinnott-Armstrong.
"Those assumptions affect you whether you're a
defendant, a victim of crime, a judge, a prospective
juror, or a community resident. For example, the legal
system assumes that people make deliberate choices and
what we choose determines what we do. However, neuroscience
indicates that our choices sometimes are based upon
electrical impulses and neuron activity that are not
a part of conscious behavior. This includes not only
criminal activity, but also decisions made by police,
prosecutors, and jurors to arrest, prosecute, or convict."
In
addition to O'Connor and Gazzaniga, the project's board
includes Morse; Raichle; Stephen Hyman, Provost, Harvard
University; Jed Rakoff, United States District Court
Judge for the Southern District of New York; and Fred
Schauer, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment,
Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
The
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a private,
independent grantmaking institution helping to build
a more just and sustainable world. Through the support
it provides, the Foundation fosters the development
of knowledge, nurtures individual creativity, strengthens
institutions, helps improve public policy, and provides
information to the public, primarily through support
for public interest media. With assets of more than
$6.4 billion, the Foundation makes approximately $225
million in grants annually and works in 60 countries.
More information is available at www.macfound.org.
Additional
information will be available beginning on October 9
on the Project's website at lawandneuroscienceproject.org.
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