Minds, Brains, and Law ─ The Conceptual Foundations of Law and Neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscientists have deepened our understanding of the complex relationship between mind and brain and complicated the relationship between mental attributes and law. New arguments and conclusions based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and other increasingly sophisticated technologies are being applied to debates and processes in the legal field, from lie detection to legal doctrine surrounding criminal law, including the insanity defense to legal theory.

In Minds, Brains, and Law, Michael S. Pardo and Dennis Patterson analyze questions that lie at the core of implementing neuroscientific research and technology within the legal system. They examine the arguments favoring increased use of neuroscience in law, the scientific evidence available for the reliability of neuroscientific evidence in legal proceedings, and the integration of neuroscientific research into substantive legal doctrines.

The authors also explore the basic philosophical questions that lie at the intersection of law, mind, and neuroscience. In doing so, they argue that mistaken inferences and conceptual errors arise from mismatched concepts, such as the disconnect between lying and what constitutes "lying" in many neuroscientific studies. The empirical, practical, ethical, and conceptual issues that Pardo and Patterson seek to redress will deeply influence how we negotiate and implement the fruits of neuroscience in law and policy in the future.

This paperback edition contain a new Preface covering developments in this subject since the hardcover edition published in 2013.

Michael S. Pardo is the Henry Upson Sims Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law. His scholarship explores epistemological issues in the areas of evidence, criminal procedure, civil procedure, and jurisprudence, with a specific focus on legal proof. He is a co-author of the fifth edition of Evidence: Text, Problems, and Cases (2011, with Allen, Kuhns, Swift, and Schwartz), and the author of numerous articles in distinguished law reviews and legal philosophy journals. He received his JD from Northwestern University School of Law.

Dennis Patterson is Board of Governors Professor of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers University School of Law. He holds the Chair in Legal Philosophy and Legal Theory at the European University Institute, and a Chair in Jurisprudence and International Trade at Swansea University. His scholarship includes legal theory, commercial law, and trade law. Patterson is the author ofLaw and Truth (Oxford University Press, 1996) and The New Global Trading Order (2008, with Ari Afilalo). He is the series editor ofThe Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law and the general editor of The Blackwell Companionto the Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory. He has published widely in jurisprudence, commercial law, trade law, and EU law. He received his JD and PhD (Philosophy) from the University at Buffalo.