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Full-Text Articles in Law
America's Newest Boogeyman For Deviant Teen Behavior: Violent Video Games And The First Amendment, Joseph C. Alfe, Grant D. Talabay
America's Newest Boogeyman For Deviant Teen Behavior: Violent Video Games And The First Amendment, Joseph C. Alfe, Grant D. Talabay
Pace Intellectual Property, Sports & Entertainment Law Forum
Are violent video games harming America’s youth? Is it possible a series of interconnected circuit boards can influence children (or even adults) to become, themselves, violent? If so, how should our society-- and government-- respond?
To properly answer this last query, violent video games must be viewed through the lens of the First Amendment. Simply put: do games depicting grotesque acts of depravity so profound as to negatively influence the psyche warrant the full constitutional protections ordinarily guaranteed under the mantle of free speech and expression? Are these guarantees without limit? If not, how far may the government go in …
Neuroscience, Justice And The "Mental Causation" Fallacy, John A. Humbach
Neuroscience, Justice And The "Mental Causation" Fallacy, John A. Humbach
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Mental causation is a foundational assumption of modern criminal justice. The law takes it for granted that wrongdoers “deserve” punishment because their acts are caused by intentions, reasons and other mental states. A growing body of neuroscience evidence shows, however, that human behavior is produced by observable physiological activity in the brain and central nervous system--all in accordance with ordinary physical laws. Beyond these ordinary physiological interactions and processes, no hypothesis of mental causation is required to causally explain behavior.
Despite the evidence, neuroskeptics insist that intentions, reasons and other mental states can play a causal role in producing human …