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Check out the September 18th edition of the Petrie-Flom Center’s biweekly e-newsletter for the latest on events, affiliate news and scholarship, and job and fellowship opportunities in health law policy and bioethics.

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From Troubled Teens to Tsarnaev: Promises and Perils of Adolescent Neuroscience and Law

September 28, 2015, 4:00 PM

Wasserstein Hall, Room 1015
Harvard Law School, Cambridge, MA

The neuroscience of adolescent brain development has had increasing impact on American jurisprudence. The U.S. Supreme Court relied on this neuroscience in Roper v. Simmons (2005) in barring execution for capital crimes committed as a juvenile and in Miller v. Alabama (2012) in holding that mandatory life without possibility of parole for juveniles is also unconstitutional. This panel will examine the implications of developmental neuroscience for law in specific domains including death penalty mitigation for young adults over age 18 such as the Tsarnaev case, a developmentally informed view of Miranda and Competence to Stand Trial for juveniles, trial of youth as adults, and conditions of confinement in juvenile and adult incarceration. The panel will also discuss the promises and perils for constitutional jurisprudence, legal and public policy reform, and trial practice of relying upon a complex body of science as it emerges.

Panelists:

Judith G. Edersheim, JD, MD, Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital; Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; and attending Psychiatrist in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital
Judge Nancy Gertner (ret.), Senior Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School; Faculty, Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital
Robert Kinscherff, PhD, JD, Senior Fellow in Law and Applied Neuroscience in the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, a collaboration between the Petrie-Flom Center and the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital; Faculty in the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at MGH; Faculty in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology and Associate Vice President for Community Engagement at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology; and Senior Associate at the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice; Faculty, Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital
Leah Somerville, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Harvard University; Faculty, Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital
Moderator: I. Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, and Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center

Part of the Project on Law and Applied Neuroscience, cosponsored by the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard Law School.

This event will be followed by the Petrie-Flom Center’s Annual Open House.