| General Description: |
The law has long grappled with the problem of violent, anti-social behavior. The
standard Anglo-American legal model requires both mens rea and actus reus in order to
establish criminal culpability. Underlying the determination of mens rea is the
understanding that individuals exercise free will, and do so in a rational fashion to
achieve directed ends. Recent work in neurobiology, behavioral science, and biological
psychiatry, however, call certain of these traditional assumptions into question by making
important inroads to understanding human behavior. Science has moved from merely
describing varieties of anti-social behavior to predicting such behavior on the basis of
genetic and environmental factors. The implications for society and the criminal law in
particular, are enormous and fraught with considerable controversy. This course will
survey recent advances in understanding behavior in the context of the implications for
the criminal law. |
