Samenvatting

This paper argues that to the extent that legal responsibility hinges on mental capacities – capacities which are implemented in (brain) mechanisms – scientists working in the fields of behavioural genetics and neuroscience can assist courts to adjudicate responsibility in several ways. First, by studying what mechanisms paradigmatically fully responsible agents possess and how those mechanisms operate. Second, by developing techniques to more individually, accurately and less subjectively inspect people’s mechanisms to gauge their true mental capacities. Third, by studying how youth, advanced age, and mental disorders affect these mechanisms. And fourth, by developing interventions to create, restore and enhance the function of these mechanisms in order to create, restore and enhance people’s responsibility-relevant mental capacities.