References to Aldous Huxley in U.S. Court Opinions

June 27, 2017June 27, 2017Leave a comment

In June 2016, I attended the annual conference of the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature (SSML). There I read my fiction and presented on “The Space and Place of Western Minnesota Writers.” Since I had just been accepted into law school, throughout the conference I kept drifting to the question of how I could combine my passion for literature with my interest in law. (Though, of course, as every good lawyer knows, good legal writing is also good creative writing). Then an idea came to me: I could study judicial references to dystopian literature.

The Legal Implications of Detecting Alzheimer’s Disease Earlier

January 30, 2017January 30, 20171 Comment

In addition to my work as an historian, I am also a JD/MA Bioethics candidate at the University of Minnesota Law School. Ever since I first read David Eagleman's book Incognito (2011), I've been enamored with the field of "neurolaw," i.e. the intersection of law and neuroscience. I've been lucky to pursue this interest professionally, setting out … Continue reading The Legal Implications of Detecting Alzheimer’s Disease Earlier

Once again we are reminded that not every brain develops the same

June 4, 2015Leave a comment

In the fall 2012, I briefly left the University of Minnesota Morris to do a series of directed studies in Houston, TX. One of these included attending Dr. David Eagleman's "Neuroscience and Law" course at Rice University, which required that we write for the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law's blog. This was originally published September 26, … Continue reading Once again we are reminded that not every brain develops the same

The importance of writing a court opinion well

February 27, 2015February 27, 20152 Comments

This month Texas Monthly published an interview with retiring Texas criminal court judge Cathy Cochran, and in it she discusses the top judiciary reforms of the last twenty years. These include the increased use of DNA evidence, compensation for the wrongfully incarcerated, and policies to curtail false eyewitness identifications. All of these are surprisingly progressive reforms … Continue reading The importance of writing a court opinion well

Neuromodulation, Or “Every Science Lab Needs a Philosopher”

February 23, 2015Leave a comment

If a fundamental question in neurolaw is how the legal system should move forward with the specific brain on trial, then the major role neuroscience can play in the courtroom is in the sentencing process. In fact, after identifying the biology that may have predisposed an individual to criminal behavior, attention must be paid to how sentencing - the rehabilitation process - can effectively be carried out. For example, if it was a malformed frontal lobe that unfairly led an individual to give in to an irresistable impulse, neuroscience plays the dual role of identifying this malformity and how best to correct it. ...

The natural sciences can inform rather than dictate our public policy

February 3, 2015Leave a comment

In an article titled "Can Neuroscience Challenge Roe v. Wade?" William Egginton, professor in the Humanities at John Hopkins University, cautions us to be careful in how we use the natural sciences to shape public policy. In this case, abortion rights. Egginton writes about attorney Rick Hearn's suits against Idaho's Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act "and others like it that cite neuroscientific findings of pain sentience on the part of fetuses as a basis for prohibiting abortions even prior to viability." The reason for this is because Hearn believes that the government is using results from the natural sciences "as a basis for expanding or contracting the rights of its citizens." The logic goes like this: if it can be proven that fetuses are capable of pain then they are conscious and thus a person deserving of their full rights under the constitution. This clearly has political overtones. ...

The Atlanta Neuroethics Consortium: Neuro-Interventions and the Law

October 13, 2014December 15, 2014Leave a comment

This is my “Voices in Bioethics” write-up of last month’s Atlanta Neuroethics Consortium. It was my first foray into the law and neuroscience world — and I loved it. What I don’t talk about is my experience using Couchsurfing.com (great!) or why I missed the Sunday panel.

With my flight leaving Sunday evening, I spent the morning walking to the Carter Presidential Library but gave up when I realized I’d never make it. Compensated by visiting the Martin Luther King Historic Site. Very good.

Voices in Bioethics

by Joshua Preston •

Recently, I attended the Atlanta Neuroethics Consortium’s (ANEC) conference on Neuro-Interventions and the Law: Regulating Human Mental Capacity (September 12-14). Hosted by Professor Dr. Nicole Vincent, it was my first foray into the “neurolaw” world. Most of the attendees and keynote speakers were pulled from the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Research Network, and because of this, I was impressed by the cross-disciplinary representation. The conference included experts in the biological sciences and psychiatry as well as legal scholars and practicing judges. Additionally, I must add, it was free, which is the best price.

The opening keynote from Vincent laid out the major topics that would be explored over the next three days. In it she outlined her taxonomy of the relationship between responsibility and mental capacity (i.e., how does an individual’s cognitive abilities affect our expectations of them?). Each panel addressed…

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Governor Floyd B. Olson on Law School Debt

September 26, 2014December 15, 2014Leave a comment

After working a series of odd jobs around the country, in 1914, at the age of 21, Olson returned to Minneapolis and attended night-classes at the Northwestern College of Law (now the William and Mitchell College of Law). The next year he graduated and passed the bar exam. But after doing so, he was sued by his law school over unpaid tuition fees. What happened next is recounted by Joseph Poirier, a college friend and later Minneapolis Municipal Judge (1937-1942): "... I recall that one of the first lawsuits Floyd tried was one in which he was a defendant. He was sued by [the] law school for an alleged unpaid balance on his tuition fee. He defended his own case, and I well recall his defense, in which he was Exhibit One as well as defendant. His argument was: "I know nothing about law, have learned nothing; and while I have been admitted to practice, you can readily see that I am no lawyer. My ignorance of the law, and the way I try this case are clear proofs that I have received nothing by reason of my alleged instruction at this school." And, strange to say, the jury found for him." (32)

Bioethical Expertise and Government

August 21, 2014December 15, 2014Leave a comment

Here’s my second article for Columbia’s “Voices in Bioethics.” In it I review a paper by Dr. Annabelle Littoz-Monnet and discuss the problems inherent at the intersection of bioethical “expertise” and government. In short, there’s no such thing as the neutral state.

Voices in Bioethics

by Joshua Preston •

In a new paper published by Dr. Annabelle Littoz-Monnet, an associate professor of political science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, she asks whether government bioethics experts bolster or inhibit democratic control of policy. To answer this, she cites the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies’ (EGE) role in the European Union’s early-2000s debate on whether to fund human embryotic stem cell research. Drawing upon news articles, reports, and personal interviews, Dr. Littoz-Monnet observes that when the debate reached a stalemate, the European Commission (the EU’s executive body) sought out the EGE’s recommendations. What followed was the use of the EGE as a means for “control[ling] the policy process despite the presence of a salient and publicly debated conflict (17, italics in original).

Although the case study is itself interesting, the value of Dr. Littoz-Monnet’s paper lies…

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US v. Hendrickson: Sentencing the Addict’s Brain

July 24, 2014November 5, 20168 Comments

Recently I’ve become a staff writer for Columbia University’s “Voices in Bioethics.” Here’s my debut article on US v. Hendrickson, a recent district court sentencing opinion that draws upon neuroscience. In it Judge Bennett cites the work of my boss, Dr. David Eagleman.

Voices in Bioethics

by Joshua Preston •

If there was any doubt whether bioethics scholarship was impacting the legal system, District Judge Mark W. Bennett’s recent sentencing opinion in US v. Hendrickson (2014) removed it. Referencing society’s evolving view of addiction and disease, he noted that “advances in science continue to outpace advances in law” and that even though addiction is no longer regarded as a moral failing but rather an illness:

the law still responds to drug abusers with punitive force, rather than preventative or therapeutic treatment. It is therefore unsurprising that, since 1980, the number of federal prisoners serving drug-related sentences has skyrocketed.

Mind Despair Although the medical community recognizes that addiction affects a victim’s judgment and behavior, Judge Bennett wrote that, within the legal community, there is no consensus whether courts should treat it as a mitigating circumstance. Instead, some judges insist it is mitigating only when it falls outside convention…