| Title |
The influence of neuroscience on US Supreme Court decisions about adolescents' criminal culpability
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Nature Reviews Neuroscience, June 2013
|
| DOI | 10.1038/nrn3509 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Laurence Steinberg |
| Abstract |
In the past 8 years, the US Supreme Court has issued landmark opinions in three cases that involved the criminal culpability of juveniles. In the most recent case, in 2012, a ruling prohibited states from mandating life without parole for crimes committed by minors. In these cases, the Court drew on scientific studies of the adolescent brain in concluding that adolescents, by virtue of their inherent psychological and neurobiological immaturity, are not as responsible for their behaviour as adults. This article discusses the Court's rationale in these cases and the role of scientific evidence about adolescent brain development in its decisions. I conclude that the neuroscientific evidence was probably persuasive to the Court not because it revealed something new about the nature of adolescence but precisely because it aligned with common sense and behavioural science. |
X Demographics
The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 68 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 11 | 16% |
| United Kingdom | 5 | 7% |
| Spain | 5 | 7% |
| Canada | 2 | 3% |
| Sweden | 1 | 1% |
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 1 | 1% |
| Ireland | 1 | 1% |
| Netherlands | 1 | 1% |
| Croatia | 1 | 1% |
| Other | 6 | 9% |
| Unknown | 34 | 50% |
Demographic breakdown
| Type | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Members of the public | 53 | 78% |
| Scientists | 9 | 13% |
| Practitioners (doctors, other healthcare professionals) | 4 | 6% |
| Science communicators (journalists, bloggers, editors) | 2 | 3% |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 214 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 3 | 1% |
| United Kingdom | 1 | <1% |
| France | 1 | <1% |
| Argentina | 1 | <1% |
| Unknown | 208 | 97% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 48 | 22% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 30 | 14% |
| Student > Bachelor | 29 | 14% |
| Student > Master | 17 | 8% |
| Professor | 16 | 7% |
| Other | 51 | 24% |
| Unknown | 23 | 11% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology | 82 | 38% |
| Social Sciences | 26 | 12% |
| Neuroscience | 20 | 9% |
| Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 10 | 5% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 10 | 5% |
| Other | 29 | 14% |
| Unknown | 37 | 17% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 257. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 April 2023.
All research outputs
#142,037
of 25,347,980 outputs
Outputs from Nature Reviews Neuroscience
#63
of 2,767 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#812
of 203,400 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature Reviews Neuroscience
#4
of 62 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,347,980 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,767 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 32.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 62 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its contemporaries.