NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Laws and public policy will often miss their mark
until they incorporate an understanding of why, biologically, humans
behave as they do, scholars from Vanderbilt and Yale universities argue
in the March issue of Columbia Law Review.
“The legal system tends to assume that either people are purely
rational actors or that their brains are blank slates on which culture
and only culture is written. The reality is much more complicated and
can only be appreciated with a deeper understanding of behavioral
biology,” said Vanderbilt law professor and biologist Owen Jones. He
co-authored the article with Timothy Goldsmith, Yale professor emeritus
of molecular, cellular and developmental biology.
All laws at their foundation are designed to influence human
behavior, from how we interact with one another, to how we relate to
our own property and that of others, to how government agencies
interact with each other and with citizens, Jones said.
When developing laws, legislators and legal scholars have
traditionally relied heavily on the social sciences, such as economics,
psychology and political science, often responding to the popular or
political trends of their time. They have rarely looked to incorporate
the latest findings from fields such as biology, neuroscience and
cognitive psychology, which have grown exponentially in recent years
and have shed brand new light on how the human brain is structured and
how it influences behavior.
One reason for this imbalance, Jones believes, is a false public
assumption that acknowledging biological causes of behavior somehow
denigrates human free will or minimizes the importance of social and
cultural conditions.
“It may follow from demonstrably false dichotomies, such as ‘nature
versus nurture,‘ taking misleading hold in the public mind,” he said.
“It may also follow from a variety of misunderstandings about how
genes, environments and evolutionary processes interact with
implications for behavior. And it certainly has something to do with
fears about what the political implications — for racism, sexism,
genetic determinism and other evils — might be, based on the use or
misuse of biological information.”
Jones argues that integrating law with behavioral biology, which
examines the biological underpinnings of human behavior, could
strengthen legal measures in a variety of areas. Such an approach might
enhance understanding of why some penalties are more effective than
others, how people make choices in areas such as environmental
protection and retirement savings, and what the underlying causes of
aggression are and how they help explain why young men are sometimes
willing — even in the face of the severest penalties — to kill in
reaction to threats to their status.
“What we‘re learning about development of the mind and the biology
of thinking is growing at a tremendous rate,” Jones said. “The main
significance of this article is that it demonstrates how the legal
system can be more effective in pursuing its goals if it integrates
life science and social science perspectives on behavior.”
In the article, Jones and Goldsmith explore how an understanding of
current behavioral biology research could improve the effectiveness of
laws by — among other things — identifying behavior patterns that would
be useful to understand when developing laws; revealing conflicts that
exist between innate human behavior and public policy written to
regulate that behavior; improving the cost-benefit analyses that are
often used in developing laws; exposing unwarranted assumptions;
assessing the effectiveness of legal strategies; and outlining deep
patterns in the legal architecture.
Jones and Goldsmith‘s publication in the Columbia Law Review
indicates that the field of law and behavioral biology has momentum in
legal scholarship.
“The Columbia Law Review is one of the most prestigious scholarly
journals in the legal academy. The fact that it has agreed to publish
this article signals the growing legitimacy and influence of the field
of law and behavioral biology,” Chris Guthrie, associate dean for
academic affairs at Vanderbilt Law School, said. “We are fortunate to
have the country‘s leading law and behavioral biology scholar here at
Vanderbilt.”
Law and behavioral biology is a small but growing field, sometimes
known as “evolutionary analysis in law,” a term coined by Jones in
1995. To encourage scholarship and research in this area, Jones founded
the Society for Evolutionary Analysis in Law in 1997 to promote the
integration of law and the life and social sciences and to help improve
behavioral models relevant to law. The organization currently has 300
members in 24 countries. The Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral
Research, with which Jones is also affiliated, was founded in 1981 to
explore these same issues and to help inform the fields of law,
economics and other social sciences with the latest scientific findings
about human behavior.
“I hope this paper will spark continuing research in this area and
foster a greater synthesis of life science and social science
perspectives, ultimately enabling law in many areas of human behavior
to achieve its goals more efficiently and effectively,” Jones said.
Jones has a joint appointment in the Vanderbilt University Law School and the university‘s biological sciences department.
Media contact: Melanie Catania, (615) 322-NEWS
Melanie.catania@vanderbilt.edu