Overcoming the myth of free will in criminal law: the true impact of the genetic revolution.

Understanding the roots of current theoretical justifications for criminal punishment is crucial in evaluating its susceptibility to future change. In the American criminal justice system, the dominant justification for punishing individuals is that offenders have made a voluntary choice to break the law, thus validating the imposition of a societal sanction. However, recent discoveries in the field of genetics have called this theoretical assumption of individual, voluntary choice into question. Because genetic influences on behavioral traits may raise doubts about the nature of individual free will, some scientists have concluded that various members of society may be less able to refrain from breaking the law than others. Consequently, several commentators have suggested that this genetic research may shake the theoretical foundations of the criminal justice system to its core, and that a radical reorganization of the system is inevitable. Other commentators have predicted that the changes will be more subtle, perhaps manifesting themselves only in the context of specific criminal adjudications. The American criminal justice system, however, is more resilient and entrenched than either category of commentators suggests. Thus, even though genetics research indicates that society should reexamine some of its philosophical assumptions about the criminal justice system and institute major systematic changes, nevertheless the American criminal justice system will likely not be dramatically altered. Instead, the resulting change will be a system that simply relies more on utilitarian rationales to justify criminal punishment than it has in the