Legal Responsibility in the current scientific Scenario

The interesting and challenging paper entitled “Responsibility and practical reason: a dialogical perspective” by Alessia Farano tries to emancipate the discussion about legal responsibility from the ‘free will approach’. The author frames the analysis within the current scientific scenario where recent scientific advances in neuroscience and genetics contribute to reinvigorating the old debate usually labelled the ‘determinism v. free will’ debate. She highlights that determinism and libertarian theories as well as the compatibilist theory are based on a “conceptual connection between responsibility and freedom.” In this view, freedom is a precondition for responsibility. The author suggests that this ‘freewill approach’ is based upon a ‘theoretical, and also historical, mistake’, and that responsibility depends on practical reason instead. My critical remarks on the paper are intended: first, to outline some implications concerning responsibility as depending on practical reasoning; second, to inquiry into the role of modern compatibilism in defining the impacts of new scientific advances on legal responsibility; and eventually, to critically discuss recent attempts to ground modern legal responsibility in an ancient concept of responsibility