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Courses at Harvard

Law, Ethics & Neuroscience (Spring 2023)

Neuroscience and neurotechnology are being deployed in courts, classrooms, legislatures, and many other social and legal contexts beyond the hospital. This raises deep bioethical and legal issues, and this seminar will explore both the promise and peril of applying neuroscience in law and public policy. Topics will include: criminal responsibility and punishment, the developing brain, memory and the law, lie detection, emotions, addiction, cognitive enhancement, aging brains, brain injury and sports concussions, and use of neuroscientific evidence in court and policymaking. Through assigned readings, weekly discussion, and engagement with local experts in fields such as neuroscience, psychiatry, neurology, neuroengineering, artificial intelligence, neuroimaging, ethics, and law, students will engage with foundational bioethics principles as they intersect with legal doctrine and practice. Students will be required to submit weekly discussion postings, engage in seminar discussion, and complete a final writing assignment.

Bioethics & Artificial Intelligence (Spring 2022)

Increasingly clinical medicine, biomedical research, and health interventions are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) algorithms, natural language processing, and autonomous robots. This seminar will explore the many bioethical implications of this rise in algorithms, artificial intelligence, robots, and brain-machine interface. Through assigned readings, weekly discussion, and engagement with local experts in fields such as reliance on black-box algorithms for clinical diagnosis; informed consent for procedures and research using AI; use of AI in surgery; robots for patient care; AI-based algorithms for suicide prevention; computational phenotyping; use of AI to identify incidental findings; and use of AI as a bioethics research tool. These topics will be examined through the lens of the foundational bioethics principles—autonomy, justice, beneficence, and non-maleficence—and also with consideration of privacy, racial bias, economic inequality, and social justice. Students will be required to submit weekly discussion postings, engage in seminar discussion, and complete a final writing assignment.

Bioethics, Bias & Justice (Spring 2021)

Bioethics scholarship and scholarly engagement with practitioners has often overlooked issues of racial bias, economic inequality, and social justice. Through direct engagement with emerging voices in the fields of bioethics and neuroethics, this seminar will provide students an opportunity to critically re-examine theoretical and applied bioethics from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Weekly special guests will allow students to thoughtfully explore topics such as race and gender bias in digital mental health during COVID-19; the role of bioethicists in addressing systemic racism; intersectionality in clinical medicine; racial discrimination in responses to COVID-19; lack of representativeness in biomedical research; bioethics in the time of Black Lives Matter; and ethical concerns about the role of neuroscience and neurointerventions in the criminal justice system. Students will be required to submit weekly discussion postings, engage in seminar discussion, and complete a final writing assignment.

Courses at Yale Law School

This course was co-taught with Judge (Ret.) Nancy Gertner. Topics covered included: Constitutional Constraints on Criminal Law, Actus Reus, Mens Rea, Mistake, Homicide, Attempt, and Justification and Excuse.. Each class session will involve a mix of lecture and discussion. Lecture and discussion will be grounded in the assigned reading material, and will also incorporate additional materials to be distributed by the Professors on Canvas in advance of the class. Additional contextualizing background on the relevant law and policy may also be provided via lecture.

Courses at University of Minnesota

What are adolescents, psychopaths, and white-collar fraud artists thinking? Why does emotional trauma for victims of abuse last so long? Why is eye-witness memory so poor? Do violent video games lead to violent children? How can you get into the heads of the judge and jury? Lawyers and courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, are already integrating neuroscience research into their arguments and opinions on questions such as these. This Law and Neuroscience course will introduce the exciting new field of “neurolaw” by covering issues such as the neuroscience of criminal culpability, brain-based lie detection, cognitive enhancement, emotions, decision making, and much more. Along the way we’ll discuss how the legal system can and should respond to new insights on topics such as adolescent brain development, addiction, psychopathy, Alzheimer’s, the effects of combat on soldiers’ brains, and concussions from sports injuries. An emphasis will be placed on “Bridge to Practice”, exploring the use of neuroscientific evidence in real legal practice.

Increasingly the world, and even the law, is being run by self-learning algorithms, autonomous robots, and other technologies that have replaced tasks historically performed by human beings. At the same time, virtual reality and brain-machine interface are creating new, unprecedented opportunities for human experience. It is not yet clear how these many interrelated technological developments will play out. But what is certain is that the law will play a central role in shaping this future. This seminar will thus explore the many legal implications of this rise in algorithms, artificial intelligence, robots, virtual reality, and brain-machine interface. Through assigned readings, weekly discussion, and engagement with local experts in AI, robotics, and neural engineering, students will explore the many promises and perils of AI. Topics for coverage will include modules on: how AI is transforming legal practice in areas such as e-discovery; labor market impact of AI; the possibility of non-human adjudication of cases; use of AI to understand legal language; rights, harms, and legal liability in virtual worlds; rights and liability for robots; legal and ethical dimensions of brain-machine interface; transhumanism; regulation of self-driving cars and drones; governance of autonomous weapons systems; and how law should address the rise of predictive analytics in determining liability.

As scientific knowledge about the effects of trauma on the brain has increased, the legal context surrounding brain injury in professional and youth sports has changed dramatically over the past decade. Legal action includes multiple federal class action lawsuits, new sports concussion statutes in all fifty states, new regulations in college and high school, new insurance markets, and a myriad of tort law suits in state and federal court. Many policy recommendations have been proposed, and many reforms have been enacted by sports leagues. The evolving legal landscape for sports concussions thus provides an exciting opportunity to see how law responds in response to scientific advances. This seminar—the first in the country to focus specifically on legal liability and sports concussions—will examine the emerging science, law, and policy of sports concussions. The seminar will feature a number of guest speakers, and will place an emphasis on developing students’ legal research and writing skills.

What limits, if any, can public school officials impose on student expressive conduct that occurs off school grounds?  May students distribute religious or political literature at a public school?  Is a student’s choice of dress protected by the Constitution?  What privacy rights do students have over their email and social media communications on and off-campus?  How does student speech-related discipline affect student achievement, issues related to immigration, gang affiliation, and the like?  This seminar will explore the topic of student speech law by surveying issues related to student speech rights and regulations.  The seminar will begin with an introduction to the First Amendment, followed by an overview of the Tinker, Fraser, Hazelwood and Morse tetralogy.  With that foundation beneath us, we’ll consider student speech topics on the local, state and federal level.  We’ll explore First Amendment lawsuits, examine anti-bullying legislation, and collect first-hand accounts of student speech-related issues in Minnesota public schools. 

This primary aim of this course is to provide you with a strong foundation for understanding, discussing, and practicing criminal law in the United States. This aim will be accomplished primarily through an introduction to core concepts, definitions, and problems in substantive criminal law, as well as through an introduction to the structure and nature of the American criminal justice system; an introduction to criminal codes and their interpretation; and exposure to controversies related to the design and operation of the criminal justice system. The course is also aimed at facilitating critical thinking about the aims of criminal law, and the ways in which the current criminal justice system does (and does not) fulfill those aims. To this end, we will integrate “ripped from the headlines” course content, and examine case studies of contemporary cases.

Law pervades all areas of modern life. Yet it remains mysterious to those without legal training. This course will introduce you to the tools that lawyers use to locate, interpret, and apply the law. Students will learn to think like lawyers through a series of contemporary case studies that require reading, writing, thinking, and problem solving like a lawyer. The course will also introduce students to the experience of law school course, with an emphasis on the Socratic Method and exploration of legal cases. Cases will be drawn from topics such as torts, property, contracts, criminal law, and others.

The Supreme Court has famously said that “education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments,” and Americans consistently rank K-12 education as the one of the most important issues they want policymakers to address. Most state constitutions have specific provisions regarding funding for education. Yet K-12 education is also one of the nation’s most contentious policy arenas. In this course students will be exposed to the many ways in which K-12 education is shaped by judges and legislators. Topics to be covered include: the structure of education law and governance; the distinctions between public, private, and home schooling; the interplay of federal, state, and local laws; religion and public schooling; charter schools and school choice vouchers; school boards; segregation; students’ rights; and teachers’ rights and teacher unions. In addition to case law, students will consider policy perspectives on school reform. Students will be encouraged to link law and real-world education policy.

The aim of this course is to provide you with a basic introduction to the Federal Rules of Evidence. The scope of the course is limited to understanding the structure and substance of the rules of admissibility, and the course will not be primarily focused on trial practice. This aim will be accomplished primarily through a problem-based approach to understanding and applying the Rules of Evidence.

Courses at Virginia Tech College of Neuroscience

Neuroscience is increasingly finding its way into law, politics, and business. This raises practical questions about whether and how brain science can add value in these fields, tactical questions about how best to position neuroscience relative to traditional social science insights, and ethical questions about the legitimacy of brain-based approaches. This course will introduce students to the new field of neurolaw by covering issues such as the neuroscience of criminal culpability, brain-based lie detection, cognitive enhancement, emotions, decision making, and much more. Along the way we’ll discuss how the legal system can and should respond to new insights on topics such as adolescent brain development, addiction, psychopathy, Alzheimer’s, the effects of combat on soldiers’ brains, and concussions from sports injuries. The course will also consider the governance of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, brain-machine interface, and virtual reality. Emphasis will be placed on exposing students to possible career tracks in which a neuroscience background may be advantageous.

Courses at Tulane Law School

What are adolescents, psychopaths, and white-collar fraud artists thinking? Why does emotional trauma for victims of abuse last so long? Why is eye-witness memory so poor? How can you get into the heads of the judge and jury? Questions like these are asked all the time by lawyers, and increasingly brain science is providing legally useful answers. U.S. courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, are already integrating neuroscience research into opinions. This Law and the Brain seminar will introduce the exciting new field of “neurolaw” by covering issues such as the neuroscience of criminal culpability, brain-based lie detection, memory enhancement, emotions, decision making, and much more. Along the way we’ll discuss how the legal system can and should respond to new insights on topics such as adolescent brain development, addiction, psychopathy, Alzheimer’s, the effects of combat on soldiers’ brains, and concussions from sports injuries.

The Supreme Court has famously said that “education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments,” and Americans consistently rank K-12 education as the one of the most important issues they want policymakers to address. Yet K-12 education is also one of the nation’s most contentious policy arenas. Education law stands at the center of these policy debates, and in this seminar students will be exposed to the many ways in which K-12 education is shaped by law. Topics to be covered include: the structure of education law and governance; the distinctions between public, private, and home schooling; the interplay of federal, state, and local laws; religion and public schooling; charter schools and school choice vouchers; school boards; segregation; students’ rights; and teachers’ rights and teacher unions. In addition to case law, students will consider policy perspectives on school reform. Special emphasis will be placed on K-12 reforms within the greater New Orleans area, several guest speakers are planned, and students will be encouraged to link law and real-world education policy.

Courses for High School JSA Students

This course has two aims: (1) to introduce you to government and politics in the United States, and (2) in doing so, prepare you to excel on the Advanced Placement (AP) exam in U.S. Government and Politics. The short length of the course does not allow us to cover all of the AP topics in depth, but you will be exposed to all of the material. By the end of this course, you will: Recognize, understand, and be able to discuss fundamental concepts and historical developments in American government and politics; Gain exposure to each of the main subject areas covered by the AP multiple choice examination: Constitutional Foundations; Political Theory and Beliefs; Political Parties, Elections, Interest Groups, and Media; Formal Institutions of Government; Public Policy, and Civil Liberties and Civil Rights; Be able to analyze and discuss current political events with more specificity and clarity; and Have developed general critical thinking skills applicable to many subjects.