Foreseeability and the Brain (feat. Dr. Teneille Brown)Foreseeability and the Brain (feat. Dr. Teneille Brown)
Lobes and Robes
Neuroscientist and legal scholars talk with Dr. Teneille Brown about how jurors think, why foreseeability and intent are so messy, and how neuroscience exposes gaps in legal ideas of responsibility and death. The conversation looks at real cases, research on juror behaviour, and the challenge of fitting spectrum-based brain science into a yes/no legal system.
56:17•16 Apr 2026
Foreseeability, Brain Science, and Why the Law Still Thinks in Black and White
Episode Overview
- Foreseeability is central to negligence law, yet jurors struggle to apply it without relying on what they now know from hindsight.
- Jurors consistently draw on a defendant’s mental state even when instructed not to, raising doubts about whether the law’s rules fit human cognition.
- Scientific concepts like intent and responsibility exist on spectrums, while legal doctrines force them into rigid binaries such as guilty or not guilty.
- Group-level or framework evidence can help jurors understand unfamiliar conditions or behaviours, but courts often misunderstand or restrict its use.
- Definitions of brain death differ across jurisdictions, and current legal standards do not always match what neurologists can reliably measure.
“In the sciences, we recognise that a lot of these mental states really exist on a spectrum, but in the law we tend to want to convert these into binaries.”
How can a jury possibly know what someone "should have seen coming"? Lobes and Robes kicks off its fifth season with law professor Dr. Teneille Brown, who digs into that tricky question by mixing law, neuroscience, psychology, and ethics into one very brainy conversation. The chat centres on foreseeability – that magical (and messy) legal word that decides who’s negligent.
Brown explains how jurors are asked to rewind time and judge what a defendant could reasonably predict, even though, as she puts it, "we’re all really bad" at foresight and cursed with hindsight bias. Her mock-jury research shows jurors keep using mental state information, even when judges tell them not to – raising the blunt question: should the law change instead of pretending humans think like robots?
You’ll hear sharp examples: faulty bike brakes in a busy park, hay that spontaneously combusts, and why the law pretends intent is a neat yes/no box while science sees mental states on a spectrum. Brown also talks through the tension between group-level evidence (what people with a certain condition generally do) and individual proof (what *this* person did), from addiction and schizophrenia to drug trafficking profiles and cancer-causing chemicals.
The episode takes a striking turn into brain death, where Brown shows how medical advances have made it harder, not easier, to decide when someone is legally dead – and how different countries and states draw that line in incompatible ways.
Hosted by neuroscientist Colin Saldanha and law professor Gustavo Ribeiro, this conversation is ideal if you’re curious how science actually lands in courtrooms, how jurors really think, and why the law still clings to old ideas about mind and body. It might leave you asking: if our brains aren’t binary, why is our law trying so hard to be?
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