Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Law Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Law

Mental Disabilities And Duty In Negligence Law: Will Neuroscience Reform Tort Doctrine?, Jean Eggen Sep 2014

Mental Disabilities And Duty In Negligence Law: Will Neuroscience Reform Tort Doctrine?, Jean Eggen

Jean M. Eggen

Recent developments in neuroscience may contribute to some long-needed changes in negligence law. One negligence rule in need of reform is the duty rule allowing physical disabilities to be considered in determining whether a party acted negligently, but disallowing mental disabilities for adult tortfeasors. Further, this bifurcated rule applies imposes an objective standard only on adults alleged to have acted negligently. A subjective standard applies to all parties in intentional torts and to children in negligence actions. Courts justify the bifurcated rule for adults on policy grounds, but these policy underpinnings are no longer valid in contemporary society. More accurate …


Neurotechnologies At The Intersection Of Criminal Procedure And Constitutional Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik Apr 2014

Neurotechnologies At The Intersection Of Criminal Procedure And Constitutional Law, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Amanda C Pustilnik

The rapid development of neurotechnologies poses novel constitutional issues for criminal law and criminal procedure. These technologies can identify directly from brain waves whether a person is familiar with a stimulus like a face or a weapon, can model blood flow in the brain to indicate whether a person is lying, and can even interfere with brain processes themselves via high-powered magnets to cause a person to be less likely to lie to an investigator. These technologies implicate the constitutional privilege against compelled, self-incriminating speech under the Fifth Amendment and the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure …


Rationality, Insanity, And The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Limits Of Reason, Theodore Y. Blumoff Mar 2014

Rationality, Insanity, And The Insanity Defense: Reflections On The Limits Of Reason, Theodore Y. Blumoff

Theodore Y. Blumoff

Individuals who suffer from chronic paranoid ideations live with deeply embedded conspiratorial delusions that are sometimes accompanied by unwanted visual and/or auditory stimuli, sometime neither: just psychotic delusions in which they feel as if they have lost control of their lives – and of course they have, albeit not from the performances of foreign forces. When those perceived forces persevere for even a fairly short period of time, they can dictate the performance of evil deeds that the individual ultimately feels helpless to oppose. What observations and findings from neuroscience make clear is that such individuals do not lack knowledge, …


Lost In The Shuffle: How Health And Disability Laws Hurt Disordered Gamblers, Stacey A. Tovino Jan 2014

Lost In The Shuffle: How Health And Disability Laws Hurt Disordered Gamblers, Stacey A. Tovino

Scholarly Works

Gambling disorder is not a legally sympathetic health condition. Health insurance policies and plans have long excluded treatment for gambling disorder from health insurance coverage. Individuals with gambling disorder who seek disability income insurance benefits from public and private disability income insurers also tend not to be successful in their claims. In addition, federal and state antidiscrimination laws currently exclude individuals with gambling disorder from disability discrimination protections. This Article is the first law review article to challenge the legal treatment of individuals with gambling disorder by showing how health insurance and antidiscrimination laws hurt problem gamblers. Using neuroscience, economics, …


Legal Osmosis: The Role Of Brain Science In Protecting Adolescents, Cheryl B. Preston, Brandon T. Crowther Jan 2014

Legal Osmosis: The Role Of Brain Science In Protecting Adolescents, Cheryl B. Preston, Brandon T. Crowther

Hofstra Law Review

In the last decade, the Supreme Court relied on scientific findings presented in amicus curiae briefs filed by various medical and psychological organizations and health professionals in three juvenile justice cases, Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama. Theresearch showed that the structure and function of adolescent brains are distinct from those of adults, which supports the position that adolescents, as a class, are generally immature in three separate, but related, ways. First, adolescents are more likely to engage in risky behavior than adults; second, adolescents are less able to control their impulses than adults; and finally, …