"Even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked," Justice Holmes famously said.
The role of intent in distinguishing criminal acts from noncriminal accidents and higher-degree offense from lower ones is deeply ingrained in our law. It may be deeply ingrained in our brains. Robert Sapolsky reports for the WSJ on a study of scanning people's brains as they read about intentional and unintentional killings. The study is Treadway, et al., Corticolimbic gating of emotion-driven punishment, Nature Neuroscience 17, 1270-1275 (2014).
The role of intent in distinguishing criminal acts from noncriminal accidents and higher-degree offense from lower ones is deeply ingrained in our law. It may be deeply ingrained in our brains. Robert Sapolsky reports for the WSJ on a study of scanning people's brains as they read about intentional and unintentional killings. The study is Treadway, et al., Corticolimbic gating of emotion-driven punishment, Nature Neuroscience 17, 1270-1275 (2014).
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