Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Neurolaw is an emerging field which poses important challenges to how our justice system treats the mentally ill. There is an immediate intuition that the more neuroscience reveals about the inner workings of the brain the more these technologies and techniques should be included within the legal system. There exists, however, significant obstacles to this inclusion. The most important is that the language of the law and the language of neuroscience can seem incommensurable. Who is to say whether the activation of a certain brain region is equivalent to an emotion or attitude? Or whether neurological data should be considered when sentencing on the grounds that it could speak to factors such as future dangerousness? Before we can rightfully take on these questions we need to sort out which concepts within these two realms are in fact equivalent, and where they depart from one another. This is where my thesis comes in. In order to get a foothold in this vast area I will be examining how the concept of 'choice' has been defined by the law and neuroscience. Case studies of individuals with a neurological disorder will be examined from both the neuroscientific literature, and from case law. A careful philosophical parsing of how these concepts have been constructed by history and science will allow me to take the first step towards creating a common language between these two fields. An equivalent examination could in the future use these methods to look at other operative concepts that appear within these fields, such as the definition of consciousness. Ultimately this work is not to ensure that all neuroscience technologies are used in the courtroom and around the mediation table as soon as they can be. It is just as important, if not more so, for us to keep junk science out as it is to include the science that is deemed helpful. The hope is that simply by showing that these two areas can speak a common language we open the door for responsible inclusion. The methods I develop will allow for both the development of expertize in these two interleaved areas, as well as provide justification for which technologies should be included, and which should be put aside.