Neurolaw

I am founder and director of the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law, which studies how new discoveries in neuroscience should navigate the way we make laws, punish criminals, and develop rehabilitation. The project brings together a unique collaboration of neurobiologists, legal scholars, and policy makers, with the goal of building modern, evidence-based policy.

I teach a yearly neurolaw seminar course which is open to students and professionals.

Along with my primary appointment at Baylor College of Medicine, I serve as a faculty affiliate at the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center, as well as adjunct faculty in Social Sciences at Rice University.

For more about our neurolaw research, read my manifesto in The Atlantic, watch the videos below, listen to an interview on Terry Gross' Fresh Air, or browse some of the articles from the Initiative:

Eagleman DM, Isgur S (2012). Defining a neurocompatibility index for systems of law. In Law of the Future, Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law. 1(2012):161-172.
Bumann B, Eagleman DM (2012). Intuitions of blameworthiness as a heuristic that evaluates the probability of the offender committing future antisocial acts. Thurgood Marshall Law Review. 36(2):129-155.
Eagleman DM (2011). The Brain on Trial. The Atlantic. July 2011.
Eagleman DM (2011). Turning our minds to the law. The Telegraph. Apr 5, 2011.
Eagleman DM, Correro MA, Singh J (2010). Why neuroscience matters for a rational drug policy. Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology.
Eagleman DM (2008). Neuroscience and the Law. Houston Lawyer. 16(6): 36-40.

For more detail on all our projects, please visit NeuLaw.org.

A talk on neurolaw at the RSA in London

A short interview on Reason.tv about the main issues in neurolaw

From the Blog

Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization

Watch a talk I gave at the Long Now Foundation about my hopes that the advent of the internet will mitigate threats that brought down previous civilizations.
Synesthesia lecture at the University of Sydney

Interested in synesthesia? Watch a lecture I gave at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Why I am a Possibilian

Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story is true or not true. I call myself a possibilian. Find out why.
The Mystery of Expertise

To the extent that consciousness is useful, it is useful in small quantities, and for very particular kinds of tasks. It's easy to understand why you would not want to be consciously aware of the intricacies of your muscle movement, but this can be less intuitive when applied to your perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs, which are also final products of…

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Neurolaw

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