Can neurological evidence help courts assess criminal responsibility? To answer this question, we must first specify legal criteria for criminal responsibility and then ask how neurological findings can be used to determine whether particular defendants meet those criteria. Cognitive neuroscience may speak to at least two familiar conditions of criminal responsibility: intention and sanity. Fun...

The Common Law: Vicarious Liability and the Development of Primary Liability UNLESS THE TERMS OF THE STATUTE INVOLVED SPECIFICALLY PROVIDE TO the contrary, the criminal responsibility of a company or corporation, as distinct from its officers or employees, falls to be determined by common law principles. Under original common law, a company could not be convicted for any criminal offence. The c...

An immense proportion of alleged felons are under the influence of mindaltering substances when they are arrested, and many people arrested for drug offenses and other crimes are addicted. Indeed, possession and use of illicit substances, which are necessary criteria of addiction, are crimes in every state and under federal law. Assessing the moral and legal responsibility of agents who engage ...

Recently, Juth and Lorentzon proposed to replace the concept of free will, as considered relevant in criminal responsibility, with the concept of autonomy. In addition, they conceived of the assessment of criminal responsibility in terms of a decision-making process. In this article, I suggest that, based on these characterizations, there is an essential similarity between assessments of crimin...

In the German-speaking area, recent years have seen a rapid growth of the need for forensic age estimations. Such need arises, for example, if no verified information on the age of a person suspected of a criminal offence is available; the issue at question in terms of criminal law is whether the person concerned has reached the age of criminal responsibility and whether general criminal law in...

It has been argued that empirical science undermines the claim that people can deserve punishment, and that the criminal justice system therefore ought to be radically reformed. Such arguments lose their force if moral responsibility and desert do not depend on what caused the action, but on the agent’s choice. We solve one problem for the justification of the criminal justice system, but creat...