The role of law and lawyers in neuroethics discussion

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The role of law and lawyers in neuroethics discussion Norio Higuchi1* 1 University of Tokyo, Department of Law, Japan The advance of neuroscience, BMI in particular, may pose hard issues in various fields including law. First, since law is the minimum of ethics, the participation of lawyers would be necessary for neuroethics discussion. In that case, it should be noted that law has not only played a regulatory role with certain sanctions, but also a supportive role for the advancement of technology and innovation. For instance, lawyers can make advice on how the governance of research in the neuroscience should be established through learning lessons of previous accidents or scandals in research. Second, lawyers are forced to take interest in the development of neuroscience, since it would give much influence upon the law itself. There are many possibilities in the future. It could make a great change in the process of trial, for example. So far the credibility of witness testimony is up to the jury in the U.S., and to the judge in Japan and many other countries. The neuroscience could make the reliability more visualized and objectively done. In the substantive law area, the influence could be much more profound. We assume that the defendant should have capacity of liability in civil cases, and capacity of criminal responsibility in criminal cases. It is the most basic ethical principle of law. The advancement of neuroscience, however, would change the fundamental element of law. These are just two simple reasons for lawyers to get involved in neuroethics discussions. It is always hard to find out good lawyers, though, and even good lawyers would find these issues a great challenge. Conference: 2015 International Workshop on Clinical Brain-Machine Interfaces (CBMI2015), Tokyo, Japan, 13 Mar - 15 Mar, 2015. Presentation Type: Oral presentation / lecture Topic: Clinical Brain-Machine Interfaces Citation: Higuchi N (2015). The role of law and lawyers in neuroethics discussion. Conference Abstract: 2015 International Workshop on Clinical Brain-Machine Interfaces (CBMI2015). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.218.00031 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Apr 2015; Published Online: 29 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Dr. Norio Higuchi, University of Tokyo, Department of Law, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan, nhiguchi@j.u-tokyo.ac.jp Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Norio Higuchi Google Norio Higuchi Google Scholar Norio Higuchi PubMed Norio Higuchi Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.