Foreword

This Foreword provides an overview of Criminal Behavior and the Brain: When Law and Neuroscience Collide, a symposium hosted by the Fordham Law Review and cosponsored by the Fordham Law School Neuroscience and Law Center. While the field of neuroscience is vast—generally constituting “the branch of the life sciences that studies the brain and nervous system”— this symposium focused on the cutting-edge ties between neuroscience evidence and the different facets of criminal law. Such an intersection invited commentary from an expert group on a wide span of topics, ranging from the historical underpinnings between law and neuroscience to the treatment of young adults to the different roles of neuroscience in the context of sentencing, expert testimony, defenses, prediction, punishment, and rehabilitation, as well as the civil and criminal divide. These diverse subjects have an overarching theme in common: each pertains in some way to the criminal justice system’s effort to punish or rehabilitate more fairly and effectively.