In Quest of Constitutional Principles of "Neurolaw"
Authors
Federico Gustavo Pizzetti
Faculty of Political Sciences - Legal-Political Department University of Milan, I
Keywords:
Cognitive Neuroscience, Functional Magnetic Resounance Imaging and other neurotechnologies, Bioethics , Neurolaw , Human rights, Constitutional principles, International and European protection of fundamental rights
Abstract
The growing use of brain imaging technology and the developing of cognitive neuroscience pose unaccustomed challenges to legal systems. Until now, the fields of Law much affected are the civil and criminal law and procedure, but the constitutional dimension of “neurolaw” cannot be easily underestimated. As the capacity to investigate and to trace brain mechanisms and functional neural activities increases, it becomes urgent the recognition and definition of the unalienable rights and fundamental values in respect of this new technoscientific power, that must be protected and safeguard at “constitutional level” of norms such as: human dignity, personal identity, authenticity and the pursuit of individual “happiness". As the same as for the law regulating research and experimentation on human genome adopted in the past years, one may also argue if the above mentioned fundamental principles of “neurolaw” must be fixed and disciplined also at European and International level.
