Brain Development and the Law

This open access book is the first to offer a systematic overview of the different methods for assessing brain development and a comparative review of how such assessments have already influenced the law. Lawmakers prefer to draw clear distinctions, but biology is characterized by continua: both in terms of how development proceeds within a person and how it differs from other people. However, this does not mean that age limits are arbitrary. This book extends the author's previous research on the Dutch juvenile criminal law, which was founded on the brain development of adolescents and has been in use for more than a decade. The role of age limits in death and life sentences in the US and the new cannabis legislation in Germany are also analyzed in depth. This project combines biological, psychological and social knowledge and puts forward a pragmatic proposal to connect the two fields of brain development and law. It will be of interest to researchers, professionals (e.g. judges, legislators) and students alike. Stephan Schleim is Associate Professor of Theoretical Psychology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and a well-known science writer, particularly in German-speaking countries. He has been publishing with Springer Nature and its associates continuously since 2005 and his writing has been translated into several languages. His German-language book Brain, Psyche and Society (2021) recently hit 250,000 accesses on SpringerLink and his most recent book Mental Health and Enhancement (2023) was published open access with PalgraveMacmillan, in the same series as Brain Development and the Law. Thus far, Schleim was principal investigator of two related research projects (VolkswagenFoundation, Dutch Research Council) and wrote and edited more than ten books, besides publishing in peer-reviewed academic journals. His scholarly articles on Frontiers commonly belong to the top 10% most accessed of all publications.