Abstract‘Neurolaw’ in the Netherlands: The justification of the new adolescent penal law from a neurophilosophical perspectiveThe possible and actual normative influence of neuroscientific research has been discussed in numerous publications. One particular part of that debate covered a number of US Supreme Court decisions since the early 2000s on the constitutionality of death or lifetime sentences for minor offenders. The present paper connects these topics to the new Dutch adolescent penal law which allows to treat adult offenders until the age (...) of 22 years under certain conditions according to the rules for minors. The justification of this law referred to adolescents’ and young adults’ brain development in a unique manner. This paper does not only describe the essential steps of the lawmaking process and the legal justification of the new adolescent penal law, but also analyzes in depth in how far the used neuroscientific findings are able to support the normative conclusions. (shrink)

In bioethics, the first decade of the twenty-first century was characterized by the emergence of interest in the ethical, legal, and social aspects of neuroscience research. At the same time an ongoing extension of the topics and phenomena addressed by neuroscientists was observed alongside its rise as one of the leading disciplines in the biomedical science. One of these phenomena addressed by neuroscientists and moral psychologists was the neural processes involved in moral decision-making. Today both strands of research are often (...) addressed under the label of neuroethics. To understand this development we recalled literature from 1995 to 2012 stored in the Mainz Neuroethics Database (i) to investigate the quantitative development of scientific publications in neuroethics; (ii) to explore changes in the topics of neuroethics research within the defined time interval; (iii) to illustrate the interdependence of different research topics within the neuroethics literature; (iv) to show the development of the distribution of neuroethics research on peer-reviewed journals; and (v) to display the academic background and affiliations of neuroethics Researchers ... (shrink)