Comments on: Law & the Brain

By: Neurolaw Sampler « The Situationist

Neurolaw Sampler « The Situationist — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:01:41 +0000

[...] a few related Situationist posts, see “Law & the Brain,” “Pinker on the Situation of Morality,” “The Science of Morality,” [...]

By: Neuroscience and the Law « The Situationist

Neuroscience and the Law « The Situationist — Wed, 09 May 2007 04:22:26 +0000

[...] To read the entire article, click here. For a related Situationist post on “Law & the Brain,” click here. [...]

By: Pooh’s Think » Blog Archive » Harvard’s ‘The Situationist’: Equality & Utility vs. Silencing the Furies

Fri, 16 Mar 2007 02:34:45 +0000

[...] by scientific custom and scientific evidence (e.g. DNA tests). This is a tension I see already, as I noted at The Situationist. Posted by Michael Metzler on Thursday, March 15, 2007, at 7:37 pm. Print This [...]

By: Michael Metzler

Michael Metzler — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:39:50 +0000

Thank you for the article summary. I’ll offer a brief criticism of what I take to be the prevailing point of view in the article: This seems like a mild false alternative. Unless science does away with our legal tradition, legal questions will be answered within the practice of judicial decision according to standards internal to that practice. Scientists and psychologist will not be answering these questions. But this says almost nothing about the extent to which the work that scientists do might bear on legal questions within this practice. The extent to which new empirical knowledge can reform the legal tradition, via standards internal to that tradition, would seem open ended. Perhaps this science is wrongly used in courtrooms at this point in time; but this would seem to suggest that adjudication needs to be tackling these issues aggressively – they are not likely to go away, even if it means the legal tradition finally bending at a very late date to new cultural understandings of moral responsibility and situational factors. A mere dismissive attitude – until science proves there is no such thing as moral responsibility at all (?) – seems destined to failure.