legal basis research paper

How to Write Legal Basis in Research: A Comprehensive Guide

How to write legal basis in research.

Legal basis in research is a critical of any study. It provides the foundation for the research and sets the stage for the methodologies and conclusions that follow. As a understanding how to write a legal basis is for the and of your work.

Legal Basis

The legal basis of a research study refers to the laws, regulations, and legal principles that provide the framework for the research. It the and for the study and that the and of the participants are protected.

Elements Legal Basis

When writing the legal basis for your research, it`s important to consider the following key elements:

Case Studies

To better understand how to write a legal basis in research, let`s look at a couple of case studies:

Case Study Medical Research

In a study on the efficacy of a new medical treatment, the legal basis would include citations to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, the Declaration of Helsinki, and relevant case law on medical experimentation.

Case Study Environmental Research

For a study on environmental impact assessments, the legal basis would involve federal and state environmental laws, as well as ethical considerations for the protection of natural habitats and wildlife.

Writing a strong legal basis in research requires a thorough understanding of the relevant laws, regulations, and ethical principles. By addressing these key elements, can a foundation for your study that the standards of and credibility.

Common Legal Questions About Writing Legal Basis in Research

Contract for legal basis in research.

This legal contract is entered into on this day by and between the undersigned parties, hereinafter referred to as “the Parties,” with the aim of establishing the legal basis for conducting research.

IN WHEREOF, the hereto have this as of the first above.

Legal Research Strategy

Preliminary analysis, organization, secondary sources, primary sources, updating research, identifying an end point, getting help, about this guide.

This guide will walk a beginning researcher though the legal research process step-by-step. These materials are created with the 1L Legal Research & Writing course in mind. However, these resources will also assist upper-level students engaged in any legal research project.

How to Strategize

Legal research must be comprehensive and precise.  One contrary source that you miss may invalidate other sources you plan to rely on.  Sticking to a strategy will save you time, ensure completeness, and improve your work product. 

Follow These Steps

Running Time: 3 minutes, 13 seconds.

Make sure that you don't miss any steps by using our:

• Legal Research Strategy Checklist

If you get stuck at any time during the process, check this out:

• Ten Tips for Moving Beyond the Brick Wall in the Legal Research Process, by Marsha L. Baum

Understanding the Legal Questions

A legal question often originates as a problem or story about a series of events. In law school, these stories are called fact patterns. In practice, facts may arise from a manager or an interview with a potential client. Start by doing the following:

• Read anything you have been given
• Analyze the facts and frame the legal issues
• Assess what you know and need to learn
• Note the jurisdiction and any primary law you have been given
• Generate potential search terms

Jurisdiction

Legal rules will vary depending on where geographically your legal question will be answered. You must determine the jurisdiction in which your claim will be heard. These resources can help you learn more about jurisdiction and how it is determined:

• Legal Treatises on Jurisdiction
• LII Wex Entry on Jurisdiction

This map indicates which states are in each federal appellate circuit:

Getting Started

Once you have begun your research, you will need to keep track of your work. Logging your research will help you to avoid missing sources and explain your research strategy. You will likely be asked to explain your research process when in practice. Researchers can keep paper logs, folders on Westlaw or Lexis, or online citation management platforms.

Organizational Methods

Tracking with paper or excel.

Many researchers create their own tracking charts.  Be sure to include:

• Search Date
• Topics/Keywords/Search Strategy
• Citation to Relevant Source Found
• Save Locations
• Follow Up Needed

Consider using the following research log as a starting place: 

• Sample Research Log

Tracking with Folders

Westlaw and Lexis offer options to create folders, then save and organize your materials there.

• Lexis Advance Folders
• Westlaw Edge Folders

Tracking with Citation Management Software

For long term projects, platforms such as Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley, or Refworks might be useful. These are good tools to keep your research well organized. Note, however, that none of these platforms substitute for doing your own proper Bluebook citations. Learn more about citation management software on our other research guides:

• Guide to Zotero for Harvard Law Students by Harvard Law School Library Research Services Last Updated Sep 12, 2023 241 views this year

Types of Sources

There are three different types of sources: Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.  When doing legal research you will be using mostly primary and secondary sources.  We will explore these different types of sources in the sections below.

Secondary sources often explain legal principles more thoroughly than a single case or statute. Starting with them can help you save time.

Secondary sources are particularly useful for:

• Learning the basics of a particular area of law
• Understanding key terms of art in an area
• Identifying essential cases and statutes

Consider the following when deciding which type of secondary source is right for you:

• Scope/Breadth
• Depth of Treatment
• Currentness/Reliability

For a deep dive into secondary sources visit:

• Secondary Sources: ALRs, Encyclopedias, Law Reviews, Restatements, & Treatises by Catherine Biondo Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 4100 views this year

Legal Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Legal dictionaries.

Legal dictionaries are similar to other dictionaries that you have likely used before.

• Black's Law Dictionary
• Ballentine's Law Dictionary

Legal Encyclopedias

Legal encyclopedias contain brief, broad summaries of legal topics, providing introductions and explaining terms of art. They also provide citations to primary law and relevant major law review articles.  

Here are the two major national encyclopedias:

• American Jurisprudence (AmJur) This resource is also available in Westlaw & Lexis .
• Corpus Juris Secundum (CJS)

Treatises are books on legal topics.  These books are a good place to begin your research.  They provide explanation, analysis, and citations to the most relevant primary sources. Treatises range from single subject overviews to deep treatments of broad subject areas.

It is important to check the date when the treatise was published. Many are either not updated, or are updated through the release of newer editions.

To find a relevant treatise explore:

• Legal Treatises by Subject by Catherine Biondo Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 3041 views this year

American Law Reports (ALR)

American Law Reports (ALR) contains in-depth articles on narrow topics of the law. ALR articles, are often called annotations. They provide background, analysis, and citations to relevant cases, statutes, articles, and other annotations. ALR annotations are invaluable tools to quickly find primary law on narrow legal questions.

This resource is available in both Westlaw and Lexis:

• American Law Reports on Westlaw (includes index)
• American Law Reports on Lexis

Law Reviews & Journals

Law reviews are scholarly publications, usually edited by law students in conjunction with faculty members. They contain both lengthy articles and shorter essays by professors and lawyers. They also contain comments, notes, or developments in the law written by law students. Articles often focus on new or emerging areas of law and may offer critical commentary. Some law reviews are dedicated to a particular topic while others are general. Occasionally, law reviews will include issues devoted to proceedings of panels and symposia.

Law review and journal articles are extremely narrow and deep with extensive references. 

To find law review articles visit:

• Law Journal Library on HeinOnline
• Law Reviews & Journals on LexisNexis
• Law Reviews & Journals on Westlaw

Restatements

Restatements are highly regarded distillations of common law, prepared by the American Law Institute (ALI). ALI is a prestigious organization comprised of judges, professors, and lawyers. They distill the "black letter law" from cases to indicate trends in common law. Resulting in a “restatement” of existing common law into a series of principles or rules. Occasionally, they make recommendations on what a rule of law should be.

Restatements are not primary law. However, they are considered persuasive authority by many courts.

Restatements are organized into chapters, titles, and sections.  Sections contain the following:

• a concisely stated rule of law,
• comments to clarify the rule,
• hypothetical examples,
• explanation of purpose, and
• exceptions to the rule  

To access restatements visit:

• American Law Institute Library on HeinOnline
• Restatements & Principles of the Law on LexisNexis
• Restatements & Principles of Law on Westlaw

Primary Authority

Primary authority is "authority that issues directly from a law-making body."   Authority , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).   Sources of primary authority include:

• Constitutions
• Statutes 

Regulations

Access to primary legal sources is available through:

• Bloomberg Law
• Free & Low Cost Alternatives

Statutes (also called legislation) are "laws enacted by legislative bodies", such as Congress and state legislatures.  Statute , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

We typically start primary law research here. If there is a controlling statute, cases you look for later will interpret that law. There are two types of statutes, annotated and unannotated.

Annotated codes are a great place to start your research. They combine statutory language with citations to cases, regulations, secondary sources, and other relevant statutes. This can quickly connect you to the most relevant cases related to a particular law. Unannotated Codes provide only the text of the statute without editorial additions. Unannotated codes, however, are more often considered official and used for citation purposes.

For a deep dive on federal and state statutes, visit:

• Statutes: US and State Codes by Mindy Kent Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 2444 views this year
• 50 State Surveys

Want to learn more about the history or legislative intent of a law?  Learn how to get started here:

• Legislative History Get an introduction to legislative histories in less than 5 minutes.
• Federal Legislative History Research Guide

Regulations are rules made by executive departments and agencies. Not every legal question will require you to search regulations. However, many areas of law are affected by regulations. So make sure not to skip this step if they are relevant to your question.

To learn more about working with regulations, visit:

• Administrative Law Research by AJ Blechner Last Updated Apr 12, 2024 507 views this year

Case Basics

In many areas, finding relevant caselaw will comprise a significant part of your research. This Is particularly true in legal areas that rely heavily on common law principles.

Running Time: 3 minutes, 10 seconds.

Unpublished Cases

Up to  86% of federal case opinions are unpublished. You must determine whether your jurisdiction will consider these unpublished cases as persuasive authority. The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure have an overarching rule, Rule 32.1  Each circuit also has local rules regarding citations to unpublished opinions. You must understand both the Federal Rule and the rule in your jurisdiction.

• Federal and Local Rules of Appellate Procedure 32.1 (Dec. 2021).
• Type of Opinion or Order Filed in Cases Terminated on the Merits, by Circuit (Sept. 2021).

Each state also has its own local rules which can often be accessed through:

• State Bar Associations
• State Courts Websites

First Circuit

• First Circuit Court Rule 32.1.0

Second Circuit

• Second Circuit Court Rule 32.1.1

Third Circuit

• Third Circuit Court Rule 5.7

Fourth Circuit

• Fourth Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Fifth Circuit

• Fifth Circuit Court Rule 47.5

Sixth Circuit

• Sixth Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Seventh Circuit

• Seventh Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Eighth Circuit

• Eighth Circuit Court Rule 32.1A

Ninth Circuit

• Ninth Circuit Court Rule 36-3

Tenth Circuit

• Tenth Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Eleventh Circuit

• Eleventh Circuit Court Rule 32.1

D.C. Circuit

• D.C. Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Federal Circuit

• Federal Circuit Court Rule 32.1

Finding Cases

Headnotes show the key legal points in a case. Legal databases use these headnotes to guide researchers to other cases on the same topic. They also use them to organize concepts explored in cases by subject. Publishers, like Westlaw and Lexis, create headnotes, so they are not consistent across databases.

Headnotes are organized by subject into an outline that allows you to search by subject. This outline is known as a "digest of cases." By browsing or searching the digest you can retrieve all headnotes covering a particular topic. This can help you identify particularly important cases on the relevant subject.

Running Time: 4 minutes, 43 seconds.

Each major legal database has its own digest:

• Topic Navigator (Lexis)
• Key Digest System (Westlaw)

Start by identifying a relevant topic in a digest.  Then you can limit those results to your jurisdiction for more relevant results.  Sometimes, you can keyword search within only the results on your topic in your jurisdiction.  This is a particularly powerful research method.

One Good Case Method

After following the steps above, you will have identified some relevant cases on your topic. You can use good cases you find to locate other cases addressing the same topic. These other cases often apply similar rules to a range of diverse fact patterns.

• in Lexis click "More Like This Headnote"
• in Westlaw click "Cases that Cite This Headnote"

to focus on the terms of art or key words in a particular headnote. You can use this feature to find more cases with similar language and concepts.  ​

Ways to Use Citators

A citator is "a catalogued list of cases, statutes, and other legal sources showing the subsequent history and current precedential value of those sources.  Citators allow researchers to verify the authority of a precedent and to find additional sources relating to a given subject." Citator , Black's Law Dictionary (11th ed. 2019).

Each major legal database has its own citator.  The two most popular are Keycite on Westlaw and Shepard's on Lexis.

• Keycite Information Page
• Shepard's Information Page

Making Sure Your Case is Still Good Law

This video answers common questions about citators:

For step-by-step instructions on how to use Keycite and Shepard's see the following:

• Shepard's Video Tutorial
• Shepard's Handout
• Shepard's Editorial Phrase Dictionary
• KeyCite Video Tutorial
• KeyCite Handout
• KeyCite Editorial Phrase Dictionary

Using Citators For

Citators serve three purposes: (1) case validation, (2) better understanding, and (3) additional research.

Case Validation

Is my case or statute good law?

• Parallel citations
• Prior and subsequent history
• Negative treatment suggesting you should no longer cite to holding.

Better Understanding

Has the law in this area changed?

• Later cases on the same point of law
• Positive treatment, explaining or expanding the law.
• Negative Treatment, narrowing or distinguishing the law.

Track Research

Who is citing and writing about my case or statute?

• Secondary sources that discuss your case or statute.
• Cases in other jurisdictions that discuss your case or statute.

Knowing When to Start Writing

For more guidance on when to stop your research see:

• Terminating Research, by Christina L. Kunz

Automated Services

Automated services can check your work and ensure that you are not missing important resources. You can learn more about several automated brief check services.  However, these services are not a replacement for conducting your own diligent research .

• Automated Brief Check Instructional Video

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• Last Updated: Sep 21, 2023 2:56 PM
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Legal Basis for Research

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In advance of any data collection, Researchers must inform participants of the legal basis under GDPR.  

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We advise researchers to rely on Article 6 (1)(e) GDPR quoted in full below:

It is a primary object and function of the University under the Irish Universities Act 1997, (section 12 (a),(j) and section 13 (b)) to promote and facilitate research.

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Secondary Data Use – Legal Basis for Research

If researchers wish to use personal data for a secondary use, such use is presumed compatible with the original purpose – if the research is in the public interest (Article 5(1) GDPR). 

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How to do legal research in 3 steps

Knowing where to start a difficult legal research project can be a challenge. But if you already understand the basics of legal research, the process can be significantly easier — not to mention quicker.

Solid research skills are crucial to crafting a winning argument. So, whether you are a law school student or a seasoned attorney with years of experience, knowing how to perform legal research is important — including where to start and the steps to follow.

What is legal research, and where do I start? 

Black's Law Dictionary defines legal research as “[t]he finding and assembling of authorities that bear on a question of law." But what does that actually mean? It means that legal research is the process you use to identify and find the laws — including statutes, regulations, and court opinions — that apply to the facts of your case.

In most instances, the purpose of legal research is to find support for a specific legal issue or decision. For example, attorneys must conduct legal research if they need court opinions — that is, case law — to back up a legal argument they are making in a motion or brief filed with the court.

Alternatively, lawyers may need legal research to provide clients with accurate legal guidance . In the case of law students, they often use legal research to complete memos and briefs for class. But these are just a few situations in which legal research is necessary.

Why is legal research hard?

Each step — from defining research questions to synthesizing findings — demands critical thinking and rigorous analysis.

1. Identifying the legal issue is not so straightforward. Legal research involves interpreting many legal precedents and theories to justify your questions. Finding the right issue takes time and patience.

2. There's too much to research. Attorneys now face a great deal of case law and statutory material. The sheer volume forces the researcher to be efficient by following a methodology based on a solid foundation of legal knowledge and principles.

3. The law is a fluid doctrine. It changes with time, and staying updated with the latest legal codes, precedents, and statutes means the most resourceful lawyer needs to assess the relevance and importance of new decisions.

Legal research can pose quite a challenge, but professionals can improve it at every stage of the process . 

Step 1: Key questions to ask yourself when starting legal research

Before you begin looking for laws and court opinions, you first need to define the scope of your legal research project. There are several key questions you can use to help do this.

What are the facts?

Always gather the essential facts so you know the “who, what, why, when, where, and how” of your case. Take the time to write everything down, especially since you will likely need to include a statement of facts in an eventual filing or brief anyway. Even if you don't think a fact may be relevant now, write it down because it may be relevant later. These facts will also be helpful when identifying your legal issue.

What is the actual legal issue?

You will never know what to research if you don't know what your legal issue is. Does your client need help collecting money from an insurance company following a car accident involving a negligent driver? How about a criminal case involving excluding evidence found during an alleged illegal stop?

No matter the legal research project, you must identify the relevant legal problem and the outcome or relief sought. This information will guide your research so you can stay focused and on topic.

What is the relevant jurisdiction?

Don't cast your net too wide regarding legal research; you should focus on the relevant jurisdiction. For example, does your case deal with federal or state law? If it is state law, which state? You may find a case in California state court that is precisely on point, but it won't be beneficial if your legal project involves New York law.

Where to start legal research: The library, online, or even AI?

In years past, future attorneys were trained in law school to perform research in the library. But now, you can find almost everything from the library — and more — online. While you can certainly still use the library if you want, you will probably be costing yourself valuable time if you do.

When it comes to online research, some people start with free legal research options , including search engines like Google or Bing. But to ensure your legal research is comprehensive, you will want to use an online research service designed specifically for the law, such as Westlaw . Not only do online solutions like Westlaw have all the legal sources you need, but they also include artificial intelligence research features that help make quick work of your research

Step 2: How to find relevant case law and other primary sources of law

Now that you have gathered the facts and know your legal issue, the next step is knowing what to look for. After all, you will need the law to support your legal argument, whether providing guidance to a client or writing an internal memo, brief, or some other legal document.

But what type of law do you need? The answer: primary sources of law. Some of the more important types of primary law include:

• Case law, which are court opinions or decisions issued by federal or state courts
• Statutes, including legislation passed by both the U.S. Congress and state lawmakers
• Regulations, including those issued by either federal or state agencies
• Constitutions, both federal and state

Searching for primary sources of law

So, if it's primary law you want, it makes sense to begin searching there first, right? Not so fast. While you will need primary sources of law to support your case, in many instances, it is much easier — and a more efficient use of your time — to begin your search with secondary sources such as practice guides, treatises, and legal articles.

Why? Because secondary sources provide a thorough overview of legal topics, meaning you don't have to start your research from scratch. After secondary sources, you can move on to primary sources of law.

For example, while no two legal research projects are the same, the order in which you will want to search different types of sources may look something like this:

• Secondary sources . If you are researching a new legal principle or an unfamiliar area of the law, the best place to start is secondary sources, including law journals, practice guides , legal encyclopedias, and treatises. They are a good jumping-off point for legal research since they've already done the work for you. As an added bonus, they can save you additional time since they often identify and cite important statutes and seminal cases.
• Case law . If you have already found some case law in secondary sources, great, you have something to work with. But if not, don't fret. You can still search for relevant case law in a variety of ways, including running a search in a case law research tool.

Once you find a helpful case, you can use it to find others. For example, in Westlaw, most cases contain headnotes that summarize each of the case's important legal issues. These headnotes are also assigned a Key Number based on the topic associated with that legal issue. So, once you find a good case, you can use the headnotes and Key Numbers within it to quickly find more relevant case law.

• Statutes and regulations . In many instances, secondary sources and case law list the statutes and regulations relevant to your legal issue. But if you haven't found anything yet, you can still search for statutes and regs online like you do with cases.

Once you know which statute or reg is pertinent to your case, pull up the annotated version on Westlaw. Why the annotated version? Because the annotations will include vital information, such as a list of important cases that cite your statute or reg. Sometimes, these cases are even organized by topic — just one more way to find the case law you need to support your legal argument.

Keep in mind, though, that legal research isn't always a linear process. You may start out going from source to source as outlined above and then find yourself needing to go back to secondary sources once you have a better grasp of the legal issue. In other instances, you may even find the answer you are looking for in a source not listed above, like a sample brief filed with the court by another attorney. Ultimately, you need to go where the information takes you.

Step 3: Make sure you are using ‘good’ law

One of the most important steps with every legal research project is to verify that you are using “good" law — meaning a court hasn't invalidated it or struck it down in some way. After all, it probably won't look good to a judge if you cite a case that has been overruled or use a statute deemed unconstitutional. It doesn't necessarily mean you can never cite these sources; you just need to take a closer look before you do.

The simplest way to find out if something is still good law is to use a legal tool known as a citator, which will show you subsequent cases that have cited your source as well as any negative history, including if it has been overruled, reversed, questioned, or merely differentiated.

For instance, if a case, statute, or regulation has any negative history — and therefore may no longer be good law — KeyCite, the citator on Westlaw, will warn you. Specifically, KeyCite will show a flag or icon at the top of the document, along with a little blurb about the negative history. This alert system allows you to quickly know if there may be anything you need to worry about.

Some examples of these flags and icons include:

• A red flag on a case warns you it is no longer good for at least one point of law, meaning it may have been overruled or reversed on appeal.
• A yellow flag on a case warns that it has some negative history but is not expressly overruled or reversed, meaning another court may have criticized it or pointed out the holding was limited to a specific fact pattern.
• A blue-striped flag on a case warns you that it has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court or the U.S. Court of Appeals.
• The KeyCite Overruling Risk icon on a case warns you that the case may be implicitly undermined because it relies on another case that has been overruled.

Another bonus of using a citator like KeyCite is that it also provides a list of other cases that merely cite your source — it can lead to additional sources you previously didn't know about.

Perseverance is vital when it comes to legal research

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• Published: 23 September 2020

The impact of legal expertise on moral decision-making biases

• Sandra Baez 1 ,
• Michel Patiño-Sáenz   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2742-3834 1 , 2 ,
• Jorge Martínez-Cotrina 3 ,
• Diego Mauricio Aponte 3 ,
• Juan Carlos Caicedo 3 ,
• Hernando Santamaría-García 4 , 5 ,
• Daniel Pastor 6 , 7 ,
• María Luz González-Gadea 8 , 9 , 10 ,
• Martín Haissiner 6 , 7 , 11 ,
• Adolfo M. García   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6936-0114 9 , 10 , 12 , 13 &
• Agustín Ibáñez   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6758-5101 9 , 10 , 13 , 14 , 15  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  7 , Article number:  103 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Traditional and mainstream legal frameworks conceive law primarily as a purely rational practice, free from affect or intuition. However, substantial evidence indicates that human decision-making depends upon diverse biases. We explored the manifestation of these biases through comparisons among 45 criminal judges, 60 criminal attorneys, and 64 controls. We examined whether these groups’ decision-making patterns were influenced by (a) the information on the transgressor’s mental state, (b) the use of gruesome language in harm descriptions, and (c) ongoing physiological states. Judges and attorneys were similar to controls in that they overestimated the damage caused by intentional harm relative to accidental harm. However, judges and attorneys were less biased towards punishments and harm severity ratings to accidental harms. Similarly, they were less influenced in their decisions by either language manipulations or physiological arousal. Our findings suggest that specific expertise developed in legal settings can attenuate some pervasive biases in moral decision processes.

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Introduction.

In legal settings, decision-making ideally requires unbiased, rational, and shared good reasons to guarantee fair processes. Although traditional legal ethos conceives law primarily as a rational field in which affect or intuition must take a secondary place (Gewirtz, 1996 ), human decision-making is influenced by cognitive and emotional factors (Ames and Fiske, 2013 ; Greene and Haidt, 2002 ; Treadway et al., 2014 ). For instance, decisions about punishment of harmful third-party actions are frequently driven by emotional biases (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 ; Buckholtz et al., 2008 ; Goldberg et al., 1999 ; Treadway et al., 2014 ). Likewise, people overestimate the damage caused by intentional harms compared to identical accidental harms, assigning more punishment and moral condemnation to the former (Ames and Fiske, 2013 , 2015 ; Baez et al., 2014 , 2016 ). Undeniably, the law sometimes expressly recognizes the influence of such elements (Guthrie et al., 2001 ). However, unlike rules and principles, non-rational considerations tend to be hidden or overlooked. Due to their relevance for legal contexts, our aim is to further illuminate the interaction of these factors in legal decision-makers. We explored the moral decisions of criminal judges, criminal attorneys, and controls, focusing on moral evaluation, punishment assignment, and harm assessment of third-party aggressions (Treadway et al., 2014 ). We evaluated the influence of (a) information on the transgressor’s mental state, (b) the use of gruesome language (GL) in harm descriptions, and (c) ongoing physiological states.

The three factors above are critical for decision-making. First, inferences of other mental states are a critical driver of moral (Baez et al., 2017 ; Guglielmo, 2015 ; Yoder and Decety, 2014 ) and legal (Buckholtz and Faigman, 2014 ; Greely, 2011 ) deliberations. Specifically, intentional harms, compared to identical accidental harms, are punished more severely, deemed morally worse, and judged to induce greater damage (Alter et al., 2007 ; Cushman, 2008 ; Darley and Pittman, 2003 ; Koster-Hale et al., 2013 ; Young et al., 2010 , 2007 ). This biasing effect of intentionality on harm quantification persists even in the face of economic incentives to be objective (Ames and Fiske, 2013 ). In legal contexts, blameworthiness is judged, among other factors, by the mental state that accompanies a wrongful action (Buckholtz and Faigman, 2014 ). Also, punishment determinations require inferences about the beliefs, intentions, and motivations of the potential perpetrator (Buckholtz and Marois, 2012 ). Second, emotionally arousing elements, such as the use of gruesome language (GL) to describe harm, can bias decision-making. GL leads to significantly greater emotional responses (e.g., stress, anguish, shock) (Nuñez et al., 2016 ) which promote harsher punishments and boost the activity of the amygdala (Treadway et al., 2014 ), a key brain region for emotional processing and harm encoding (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 ; Hesse et al., 2016 ; Salerno and Peter-Hagene, 2013 ; Shenhav and Greene, 2014 ). Effects of emotionally arousing elements have been reported even in legal contexts (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 ). Gruesome evidence (e.g., autopsy images of severe injuries) typically provokes anger or disgust (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 ; Salerno and Peter-Hagene, 2013 ; Treadway et al., 2014 ) and can influence mock-jurors’ verdicts of defendants’ guilt or punishment (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 , 2011 ; Whalen and Blanchard, 1982 ). However, the effect of such elements on decision-making has not been assessed in legal experts. Third, emotional responses at large are driven by ongoing physiological states, which also shape decision-making processes (Greifeneder et al., 2011 ; Lerner and Keltner, 2000 ; Winkielman et al., 2007 ).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, legal decision makers are not fully immune to implicit biases—unconscious, automatic responses that shape behavior (Greenwald and Banaji, 1995 ). Although judges’ deliberations have been proposed to hinge on facts, evidence, and highly constrained legal criteria (Guthrie et al., 2008 ), legal decisions may be affected by various biases. Numeric anchors influence how legal decision makers determine appropriate damage awards and criminal sentences (Englich et al., 2006 ; Rachlinski et al., 2015 ). For instance, legal experts (judges and prosecutors) have been observed to anchor their sentences on particular random influences (e.g., random numbers or prior criminal sentences in unrelated cases) (Englich et al., 2006 ). Judges’ decisions are also influenced by common cognitive illusions, such as framing (different treatment of economically equivalent gains and losses) and egocentric biases (overestimations of one’s own abilities) (Guthrie et al., 2001 ). Moreover, they may operate on implicit racial biases, which can affect their decisions (Rachlinski et al., 2008 ). White judges display an automatic preference for White over Black. Black judges carry a more diverse array of implicit biases: some exhibit a White preference, others exhibit no preference, and still others exhibit a Black preference. Moreover, these implicit associations influence judges’ decisions when the race of the defendant is subliminally manipulated. After exposure to a Black subliminal prime, judges with strong White preferences make harsher judgments of defendants, while judges with strong Black preferences are more lenient. However, judges are able to monitor and suppress their own racial biases when consciously motivated to do so (Rachlinski et al., 2008 ). In addition, although experimental research is lacking, preliminary evidence suggests that emotions and reactions to litigants may influence judges’ decisions (Wistrich et al., 2015 ). Specifically, affect influences judges’ interpretation of the law, biasing decisions in favor of litigants who generate positive affective responses (Wistrich et al., 2015 ).

As a fundamental component of human culture, morality involves prescriptive norms regarding how people should treat one another, including concepts such as justice, fairness, and rights (Yoder and Decety, 2014 ). In addition to ordinary moral norms, the law exerts a major regulatory role in social life (Schleim et al., 2011 ). Indeed, moral and legal decision-making have been linked to broadly similar neural correlates, suggesting a considerable overlap in their underlying cognitive processes (Schleim et al., 2011 ). Both moral and legal judgments recruit a brain network including the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate gyrus, the precuneus, and the left temporo-parietal-junction (Schleim et al., 2011 ). These regions are typically active when thinking about the beliefs and intentions of others (Saxe and Kanwisher, 2003 ). Moreover, legal judgments were associated with stronger activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, suggesting that this kind of decisions were made with regard to explicit rules and less intuitively than moral decisions (Schleim et al., 2011 ). In spite of its relevance, moral decision-making remains unexplored in criminal judges or attorneys. Likewise, no study has examined whether the decisions made by these experts are biased by information about the transgressor’s mental state, the use of GL in describing harmful events, or their own physiological states.

To address these issues, we assessed 169 participants, including 45 judges and 60 attorneys specialized in criminal law. On average, judges had been working in criminal law for 19 years (SD = 9.8), whereas attorneys had 13 years (SD = 11.17) of experience as litigators in the field. Outcomes from both groups were compared to those of a control group ( n  = 64) comprised of community members with mixed educational levels, without work experience or a law degree. Of note, whereas previous studies using language manipulations (i.e., gruesome vs. plain language) have focused only on punishment ratings (Treadway et al., 2014 ), here we investigated the impact of GL on three aspects of moral decision-making: morality (Moll et al., 2005 ), punishment (Cushman, 2008 ), and harm severity ratings (Decety and Cowell, 2018 ; Sousa et al., 2009 ). These aspects hold great relevance for the present study, since moral judgment is critical for enforcing social norms (Yoder and Decety, 2014 ) and its neural correlates overlap with those mediating legal decision-making in professional attorneys (Schleim et al., 2011 ).

Participants completed a modified task (Treadway et al., 2014 ) consisting of text-based scenarios in which a character inflicts harm on a victim. After reading each story, participants answered three questions by choosing a number from a Likert-like scale using the keyboard (see details in “Methods” section). Participants were asked to (a) rate how morally adequate the transgressor’s action was (morality rating), (b) quantify the amount of punishment the transgressor deserved (punishment rating), and (c) assess the severity of harm that was caused (harm severity rating). The transgressor’s mental state and the situation’s emotional content were manipulated to create four types of scenarios, namely: intentional GL, accidental GL, intentional plain language (PL), and accidental PL scenarios. In half of the scenarios, the main actor deliberately intended the harm that actually befell on the victim (intentional harm). In the remaining half, the actor caused identical damage but without purposeful intent (accidental harm). Additionally, emotional content was manipulated in the scenarios in a between-subjects design. Half of participants were assigned to the GL condition, and the other half to the PL condition. Participants in the GL condition read highly gruesome descriptions of harm, which were intended to amplify emotional reactions (Treadway et al., 2014 ). Instead, participants in the PL condition read the same stories but were presented with plain, just-the-facts language. Therefore, the actual harm experienced by the victim was equivalent in both conditions (see Fig. 1 for an example).

The top panel shows a stem scenario depicting intentional harm. The bottom panel presents a stem scenario depicting accidental harm. At the left side of each panel harm is described with gruesome terms, and at the right side harm is described with plain, just-the-facts language. Note that the consequence in each scenario is the same, namely, death.

Also, considering that executive functions (EFs) can modulate moral cognition (Baez et al., 2018 ; Buon et al., 2016 ), we examined this domain in a sub-sample of participants ( n  = 86). For instance, moral reasoning maturity is associated with the integrity of EFs (cognitive flexibility, feedback utilization, abstraction capacity, and verbal fluency) (Vera-Estay et al., 2014 ). In particular, inhibitory control resources enabling regulation and control of other cognitive processes that might be critical for judging accidental harms (Buon et al., 2016 ). In addition, individual differences in working memory, which reflect cognitive-control variation, predicted moral judgments. Specifically, people with greater working memory abilities perform more rational evaluations of consequences in personal moral dilemmas (Moore et al., 2008 ). Here, executive functioning was assessed through the INECO frontal screening (IFS) battery (Torralva et al., 2009 ), a brief and well-validated test in clinical (Baez, Ibanez et al., 2014 ; Bruno et al., 2015 ; Torralva et al., 2009 ) and healthy (Gonzalez-Gadea et al., 2014 ; Santamaria-Garcia et al., 2019 ; Sierra Sanjurjo et al., 2019 ) populations. The IFS assesses various EFs, namely: motor programming, conflicting instructions, inhibitory control, working memory, and abstraction capacity (see details in Supplementary Materials and methods, SI ). In addition, given that affective engagement triggered by GL may be indexed by autonomic arousal, we obtained electrocardiogram (ECG) recordings from the same subset of participants in order to examine their heart-rate variability (Castaldo, 2015 ; Kop et al., 2011 ; Mccraty et al., 1995 ; Shaffer and Ginsberg, 2017 ) during the task.

Given the expertise of judges and attorneys in deciding over transgressions, we expected their moral decisions to be more appropriately adjusted to the perpetrator’s intentions and to rely less on emotional reactions and peripheral physiological signals. In line with these predictions, our results showed that the transgressor’s mental state was a key determinant in moral decision-making (Guglielmo, 2015 ; Yoder and Decety, 2014 ). Specifically, we found that, similar to controls, judges and attorneys overestimated the damage caused by intentional harms compared to accidental harms. However, judges and attorneys were less biased towards punishment and harm severity ratings in the face of accidental harm. Also, unlike controls, language manipulations and physiological arousal had no significant effects on judges or attorney’s decisions. Compatibly, morality ratings in response to GL manipulations were predicted by physiological signals only in controls. This suggests that legal decision makers may rely less than controls on physiological signals to evaluate transgressions, although they remain biased by the “harm-magnification effect” (Ames and Fiske, 2013 , 2015 ; Baez, Herrera et al., 2017 ), which shows that people overestimate the damage caused by intentional harm compared with accidental harm, even when both are identical. Together, these results suggest that specific expertise developed in legal settings can partially abolish strong biases linked to the assessment of others’ mental states, the affective states induced by GL, and the physiological state of one’s own body.

Morality ratings

In each scenario, participants were asked to judge how morally wrong the protagonist’s transgression was, using a scale from 1 (entirely good) to 9 (entirely wrong). Across groups and PL–GL conditions, participants considered intentional harms as morally worse than accidental ones ( F 1,163  = 606.82, p  < 0.0001, η 2  = 0.78). Also, across groups and accidental and intentional scenarios, participants exposed to GL, compared to those faced with PL, rated harmful actions as morally worse ( F 1,163  = 4.77, p  = 0.03, η 2  = 0.02). Importantly, an interaction was also found between language and group ( F 2,163  = 7.16, p  = 0.002, η 2  = 0.07). Post-hoc comparisons showed that judges and attorneys were immune to the influence of GL, presenting similar morality ratings in both language conditions (judges: p  = 0.77; attorneys: p  = 0.50). On the contrary, controls exposed to GL, compared to those faced with PL, rated harmful actions as morally worse ( p  = 0.0002) (Fig. 2a ).

a We observed a group-by-language interaction, such that only participants of the control group had significantly higher morality ratings when reading gruesome descriptions of harm, relative to the PL condition. b We also found a group-by-intentionality interaction, revealing that punishment ratings were significantly lower for the judges and attorneys groups in comparison to controls during accidental scenarios. There were no differences between groups when participants read intentional scenarios. c We found a group-by-intentionality interaction, revealing that harm severity ratings were significantly lower for judges and attorneys than controls in accidental scenarios. Participants in all groups assessed harms as significantly greater in magnitude when they were committed intentionally, in comparison to situations when harm was accidentally caused. This reveals a biasing effect of intentionality on damage assessments, because the accidental and intentional conditions contained an equivalent range of harms. Significance coding: * p  < 0.01; ** p  < 0.001; *** p  < 0.0001.

Punishment ratings

Participants also had to decide on the amount of punishment deserved by the transgressor, on a scale from 1 (no punishment) to 9 (severe punishment). Across all groups and language conditions, subjects assigned more punishment to intentional than accidental actions ( F 1,163  = 1107.60, p  < 0.0001, η 2  = 0.87). However, groups behaved differently in their punishment assignment decisions ( F 2,163  = 37.85, p  < 0.0001, η 2  = 0.31). Judges and attorneys punished harmful actions to a similar degree ( p  = 0.98). However, controls punished transgressions more than judges ( p  = 0.00002) and attorneys ( p  = 0.00002). We also found an interaction between intentionality and group ( F 2,163  = 17.94, p  < 0.0001, η 2  = 0.18). The judges ( p  = 0.0002) and attorneys ( p  = 0.00002) assigned significantly less punishment to accidental harmful actions than did controls (Fig. 2b ). Moreover, judges and attorneys did not differ in their punishment ratings for the accidental condition ( p  = 0.91). On the other hand, neither judges ( p  = 0.96) nor attorneys ( p  = 0.48) differed from controls in their punishment ratings for intentional harmful actions.

Harm severity ratings

Finally, participants had to assess how harmful the protagonist’s action was using a scale from 1 (not harmful) to 9 (very harmful). In order to make accidental and intentional conditions comparable, the range of harms was equivalent between them (see “Methods” section). However, across groups and language conditions, participants assigned higher harm severity ratings to intentional than accidental harms ( F 1,163  = 170.37, p  < 0.0001, η 2  = 0.51). Moreover, groups differed in their harm severity ratings ( F 2,161  = 10.59, p  = 0.0004, η 2  = 0.11). Compared to controls ( p  = 0.00003) and attorneys ( p  = 0.040), judges estimated that the transgressor’s actions were less harmful. Attorneys’ damage ratings did not differ from those of controls ( p  = 0.10) (Fig. 2c ). We also found an interaction between intentionality and group ( F 2,163  = 23.42, p  < 0.0001, η 2  = 0.2). The judges ( p  = 0.0002) and attorneys ( p  = 0.00002) assigned significantly lower severity harm ratings to accidental harmful actions than did controls (Fig. 2c ). Moreover, judges and attorneys did not differ in their harm severity ratings for the accidental condition ( p  = 0.18). Neither judges ( p  = 0.98) nor attorneys ( p  = 0.29) differed from controls in their harm severity ratings for intentional harmful actions. Also, intra-group comparisons showed that the three groups assigned higher harm severity ratings to intentional compared to accidental harms (judges: p  = 0.00002; attorneys: p  = 0.00002; controls: p  = 0.005).

The role of executive functioning and physiological arousal on moral decisions

We also explored the role of two potential modulators of participants’ decisions via regression models including measures of EFs and heart rate variability (HRV) in a subsample of participants ( n  = 86) comprising 30 attorneys, 27 controls, and 29 judges. Groups in this subsample did not differ in terms of years of education or sex, but they differed significantly in age (see “Methods” section and Table S1 ). Therefore, to test the potential association between this variable and the measures in which we found group differences, age was included as an additional predictor in all regression models. We estimated the low frequency (LF) band power from participants’ ECGs, given the relevance of this measure as a proxy of emotional arousal (Castaldo, 2015 ; Kop et al., 2011 ; Mccraty et al., 1995 ). We calculated the percentage change of power in this band from baseline to task (Sloan et al., 1995 ) (see “Methods”; and SI: “Materials and methods”).

The first linear model included group, language, EFs, LF power, and age as predictors, and morality ratings (mean of morality ratings for intentional and accidental harms) as a dependent variable. We used morality ratings averaged over intentionality levels because we previously found that this factor did not interact with group or language. The overall model was statistically significant ( F 7,78  = 2.79, p  = 0.0013, R 2  = 0.22). Age ( t  = −0.034, p  = 0.20, β  = −0.02) was not a significant predictor. As expected, the model had a significant group-by-language interaction. This interaction revealed that controls evaluated actions as morally worse compared to judges and attorneys, but only when participants were exposed to GL (GL × attorneys: t  = −2.85, p  = 0.0056, β  = −0.616; GL × judges: t  = −2.16, p  = 0.034, β  = −0.455; PL × attorneys: t  = −0.44, p  = 0.66, β  = −0.133; PL × judges: t  = −1.34, p  = 0.18, β  = −0.291). Such differences between groups in the GL condition were confirmed by follow-up t -tests of average morality ratings (attorneys-controls: t 25.4  = −4.18, p  = 0.0045; Controls-judges: t 19.9  = 2.92, p  = 0.0084; attorneys-judges: t 29.4  = −0.98, p  = 0.34; p -value adjustment method: Holm–Bonferroni).

Importantly, LF power predicted average morality ratings in the model ( t  = −2.70, p  = 0.0086, β  = −0.06), suggesting that participants may rely on physiological signals to make moral judgments. In order to determine whether this association was present across all groups and language conditions, for each group we ran separate linear simple regressions with average morality as dependent variable and LF power as predictor (Fig. 3 ). In the GL condition, LF power was not significantly associated to morality ratings made by judges ( t  = 0.47, p  = 0.64, β  = 0.13) or attorneys ( t  = −2.06, p  = 0.06, β  = −0.45). Contrarily, HRV significantly predicted morality ratings in the GL condition for the control group ( t  = −2.48, p  = 0.03, β  = −0.61). HRV was not associated to morality ratings for any group assigned to the PL condition (judges: t  = 0.17, p  = 0.86, β  = −0.04; attorneys t  = −1.96, p  = 0.09, β  = −0.53; controls: t  = −0.85, p  = 0.41, β  = −0.23).

There was a significant correlation between LF power and mean morality ratings only for control participants that read gruesome descriptions of harm, but not for those that read plain descriptions. a This association was not significant in attorneys b or judges c who read either plain or gruesome descriptions. Depicted in the scatter plots are the regression lines and 95% confidence intervals.

We fitted an additional linear model including group, EFs, LF power, and age as predictors, and punishment ratings to accidental harms as a dependent variable (the significant variable in previous rating outcomes). Results showed that age ( t  = 0.76, p  = 0.45, β  = 0.113), EFs ( t  = −0.47, p  = 0.64, β  = 0.01), and LF power ( t  = −1.89, p  = 0.062, β  = 0.04) were not significant predictors of punishment ratings, although the overall model was statistically significant ( F 6,79  = 3.41, p  = 0.0048, R 2  = 0.15). Regarding group differences, only the slope of the judges’ group was significant (attorneys: t  = −1.51, p  = 0.14, β  = −0.37; judges: t  = −4.04, p  = 0.00012, β  = −1.03; controls were the reference group). Therefore, punishment assignment results do not appear to be explained by age, HRV or EFs.

Lastly, we fitted a linear model to assess the contribution of EFs, HRV, and age on harm severity ratings. This model included group, age, EFs scores, and LF power as predictors, with harm severity ratings to accidental harms (the relevant outcome of previous rating results) as the dependent variable. Even though the overall model was significant ( F 6,79  = 2.89, p  = 0.026, R 2  = 0.12), only EFs scores significantly predicted mean harm severity ratings ( t  = 2.37, p  = 0.01, β  = 0.25). No other significant associations were observed.

To our knowledge, the present study represents the first experimental comparison of moral decision-making in criminal judges, attorneys, and controls, focusing on three sources of bias: (a) information about the transgressor’s mental state, (b) language manipulations aimed at provoking emotional reactions, and (c) ongoing physiological states. We found that information on the transgressor’s mental state influenced morality, punishment, and harm severity ratings across all groups. However, judges and attorneys ascribed significantly less punishment and harm severity ratings to accidental harms than did controls. Moreover, the decisions of judges or attorneys were not biased by GL or ongoing physiological signals in the face of harmful actions. Together, these results indicate that academic background and professional expertise can shape the minds of legal decision makers, illuminating the potential role that legal expertise may have in overriding cognitive, emotional, and physiological biases lurking behind their daily work.

Information on the transgressor’s mental state influenced moral decision-making across all groups. Our results confirmed that, compared to accidental harms, intentional ones were evaluated as morally worse (Cushman, 2008 ; Young and Saxe, 2008 ), received harsher punishments (Buckholtz et al., 2015 ; Cushman, 2008 ), and were considered more damaging (Ames and Fiske, 2013 , 2015 ). However, judges and attorneys ascribed significantly less punishment to accidental harms than did controls, there being no between-group differences for intentional harms. Previous evidence from healthy (Decety et al., 2012 ) and clinical (Baez et al., 2014 , 2016 ) populations shows that intentionality comprehension is higher for intentional than accidental harm, suggesting that the latter is less clear or explicit and involves greater cognitive demands (Baez et al., 2016 ). Also, it has been suggested that a robust representation of the other’s mental state is required to exculpate an accidental harm (Young et al., 2007 ; Young and Saxe, 2009b ). This robust representation allows overriding a preponderant response to the salient information about actual harm. Thus, the present results suggest that legal experts may be more skilled at detecting the intentionality of the actor, representing his/her mental state, and overriding the prevalent response to the outcome. In law, blameworthiness is judged, among other factors, by reference to the mental state that accompanied a wrong action (Buckholtz and Faigman, 2014 ). Punishment for a harmful action hinges on a determination of moral blameworthiness (in criminal contexts) or liability (in the law of torts) (Buckholtz and Faigman, 2014 ). Such determinations require inferences about the beliefs, intentions, and motivations of the individual being considered for sanction (Buckholtz and Marois, 2012 ). Thus, our findings suggest that the expertise of judges and attorneys could hone intentionality detection abilities, leading to more objective punishment ratings. However, as we did not include specific measures of intentionality detection abilities, future studies on legal decision-makers should test this interpretation.

Although, compared to controls, judges and attorneys assigned lower harm severity ratings to accidental harms, across groups and language conditions, participants assigned higher ratings to intentional compared to accidental harms. Since harm severity was identical in both intentionality conditions, our results imply that judges and attorneys are also biased by the widely described “harm-magnification effect” (Ames and Fiske, 2013 , 2015 ): people overestimate an identical damage when intentionally inflicted. Studies on defensive attributions (Shaver and Drown, 1986 ), retributive justice (Darley and Pittman, 2003 ), and moral psychology (Knobe et al., 2012 ) converge to show that when people detect harm, they are urged to blame someone. However, people are notoriously more sensitive to harmful intentions. Indeed, the urge to find a culprit is higher in the face of intentional than accidental harms (Ames and Fiske, 2015 ; Young and Saxe, 2009a ). Such motivation to blame causes people to overestimate actual damage (Ames and Fiske, 2013 ). This view aligns with traditional philosophical accounts (Nagel, 1979 ; Williams, 1982 ) suggesting that “moral luck” reflects the direct influence of the outcome on moral judgments. The perceived severity of harmful outcomes can influence moral judgments independently of inferences that people make about a harmful actor’s beliefs or desires (Martin and Cushman, 2016 ). Thus, bad outcomes would lead directly to more blame, independent of other facts about the agent and the action (Zipursky, 2008 ). Given this motivation to blame harm-doers, people emphasize evidence that make their case more compelling (Alicke and Davis, 1990 ), and one tactic to do this would be to imply that harm-doers caused more harm than they actually did (Ames and Fiske, 2013 ). Thus, harmful acts that lead to especially large amounts of blame motivation also lead to exaggerated perceptions of harm.

An additional explanation to this effect is the fact that intentional harm (as opposed to accidental harm) involves an additional “symbolic” damage to the victim (Darley and Huff, 1990 ), beyond the physical injury or damage to property. In particular, the sensitivity of judges and attorneys to this effect could reflect their training to recognize that these additional consequences, rather than the harmful result by itself, may be derived from an intentional harm. Compared to accidental harms, intentional harms may result in more important subjective losses, such as pain, suffering or emotional distress for the victim. The specific knowledge about law might explain the overestimation of intentional harm by judges and attorneys. Still, this finding has important implications, since the harm-magnification effect may inflate legal sentences. In sum, our findings suggest that legal expertise might improve intentionality detection abilities without abolishing the harm-magnification effect. This speaks to a partial discrepancy between the way humans actually make decisions and the underlying assumptions of the legal system.

We also manipulated the emotional responses to harm by describing scenarios via GL and PL (Treadway et al., 2014 ). Results showed that GL did not bias the judges’ and attorneys’ decisions, suggesting that expertise and academic background in criminal law render these individuals more immune to the effects of language bias on moral decision-making. On the contrary, GL biased morality ratings in controls, supporting similar reports in moral decision-making (i.e., punishment ratings in controls) (Treadway et al., 2014 ) and in mock-jurors’ decisions (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 , 2011 ; Whalen and Blanchard, 1982 ). Thus, our findings suggest that legal system experts are not biased by language-triggered emotional reactions, even when these effects impact ordinary citizens (who, in some countries, can actually act as jurors in legal settings).

No effects of language manipulations were found on punishment or harm severity ratings. Note that, as opposed to these, morality ratings seem to be more automatic (Haidt, 2001 ) and precede punishment and harm severity decisions (Buckholtz et al., 2008 ). Punishment decisions seem to be less automatic and require the integration of mental state information and harm severity assessment (Buckholtz et al., 2015 ; Carlsmith et al., 2002 ). Unlike the latter, morality decisions involve an instant feeling of approval or disapproval when witnessing a morally-laden situation (Haidt, 2001 ) as well as evaluative judgments based on socially shaped ideas of right and wrong (Moll et al., 2005 ). Note that, while previous research using language manipulations (i.e., gruesome vs. plain language) has only focused on punishment ratings (Treadway et al., 2014 ), ours is the first investigation on the impact of GL on morality, punishment, and harm severity ratings. Thus, our results suggest that when different dimensions of moral decision-making are assessed, automatic emotional-triggering biases (such as those linked to GL) could affect morality ratings more than punishment and harm severity ratings.

We performed complementary analyses to explore the effect of crime type on the observed group differences. We found that across morality, punishment, and harm severity dimensions, participants assigned higher ratings to death compared to property damage scenarios. For morality and harm severity, participants also provided higher ratings to death compared to physical harm scenarios. These results are consistent with those of previous studies showing that the magnitude of harm (i.e., actions resulting in death versus loss of property) predicts higher morality (Gold et al., 2013 ) and punishment (Treadway et al., 2014 ) ratings. Importantly, these differences are present across the three groups and do not explain the observed effects of language in controls’ morality ratings or the group effects on punishment and harm severity ratings for accidental harms.

We also explored the effects of years of experience in criminal law on moral decision-making of judges and attorneys. The former variable was not significantly associated with morality, punishment or harm severity ratings in either judges or attorneys. It is worth noting that years of professional practice was the only measure of experience included in this work. Future studies should further investigate whether specific components of experience, such as levels of exposure or desensitization, contribute to moral decision patterns observed in these populations. Our findings suggest that, rather than years of experience, criminal law expertise (specific knowledge, background, and technical skills), and the professional role per se (judges and attorneys) seem to have a more relevant role in overriding cognitive and emotional biases, which can influence moral decision-making. In line with our results, previous evidence has shown that expertise and experience may play different roles on judicial decision-making. For instance, prior expertise enhances the influence of ideology on judicial decision-making, but accumulated experience does not (Miller and Curry, 2009 ). Legal experts with domain-specific expertise in criminal law show less sensitivity to confirmatory bias than legal professionals without this expertise (with specializations in other fields than criminal law) (Schmittat and Englich, 2016 ). Thus, our findings and previous evidence suggest that specific knowledge, background, and technical skills in criminal law have a relevant role in overriding cognitive and emotional biases which can influence decision- making.

It is worth noting that judges were the only group whose physiological signals showed no association with decision patterns. This relation was marginally significant in attorneys and fully significant in controls (with HRV predicting morality ratings in the GL condition). Consistent with the results of language manipulation, moral decision-making in judges and, to a less degree, in attorneys, seems to rely less on peripheral physiological signals usually associated with emotional reactions (Kop et al., 2011 ; Mccraty et al., 1995 ; Shaffer and Ginsberg, 2017 ). This pattern suggests that the particular expertise and training of judges and attorneys is relevant in reducing the effect of physiological arousal on moral decision-making. Both, judges and attorneys are repeatedly exposed to graphic or gruesome material and this could reduce the associated physiological arousal. Besides, both groups have specific academic background on the ideal of non-biased decision-making, and their everyday activities may provide them with training in identifying and avoiding biases associated to physiological signals. As no measures of exposure to gruesome material in professional practice or explicit knowledge on biases associated with decision-making were included in this study, future research should test these interpretations. Note that the association between physiological signals and morality ratings is completely absent only in judges. This difference between judges and attorneys may be explained by the specific role that each one plays in their daily practice. Unlike attorneys, judges preside or decide at trials, decide what evidence will be allowed, and instruct juries on the law they should apply. Thus, it is expected that judges should be impartial and decide according to the law, free from the influence of biases. Conversely, attorneys represent and defend their clients’ position. Therefore, although both judges and attorneys are repeatedly exposed to gruesome material, only the first are expected to impartially evaluate and decide on this evidence. These differences may explain why the reliance of moral decisions on peripheral physiological signals was greater for attorneys than judges. This hypothesis should be directly assessed in future studies.

Besides, our results showing that in controls physiological signals triggered by GL are associated with morality ratings support previous studies showing that gruesome evidence provokes emotional reactions (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 ; Salerno and Peter-Hagene, 2013 ; Treadway et al., 2014 ) and boosts the activity of the amygdala, a key brain region involved in emotional processing and harm encoding (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 ; Hesse et al., 2016 ; Salerno and Peter-Hagene, 2013 ; Shenhav and Greene, 2014 ; Treadway et al., 2014 ). Thus, our study supports empirical (Damasio, 1994 ; Greene and Haidt, 2002 ; Haidt, 2008 ; Moll et al., 2005 ) and theoretical (Damasio, 1994 ; Forgas, 1995 ; Haidt, 2001 ) claims that bodily and emotional reactions impact on moral decision-making. In addition, our results suggest that these reactions can be attenuated by legal expertise.

Finally, we found that executive functions (EFs) significantly predicted mean harm severity ratings, confirming the role of these domain-general skills in moral decisions (Baez et al., 2018 ; Buon et al., 2016 ). Tentatively, this indicates that EFs may support the regulation and control of diverse cognitive processes critical for moral judgment (Buon et al., 2016 ). Further research using more extensive assessments should identify specific relationship between EFs and different aspects of moral decision-making in expert and non-expert populations.

Our findings may have important implications for context-based modulations of cognitive processes (Baez et al., 2017 ; Barutta et al., 2011 ; Cosmelli and Ibáñez, 2008 ; Ibáñez et al., 2017 ; Ibañez and Manes, 2012 ; Melloni et al., 2014 ) underlying legal behavior. Morality is a fundamental component of human cultures, affording a mechanism for social norm enforcement (Yoder and Decety, 2014 ). Indeed, morality hinges on prescriptive norms about how people should treat one another, including concepts such as justice, fairness, and rights (Yoder and Decety, 2014 ). Yet, in addition to ordinary moral norms, law exerts an additional regulatory role in social life (Schleim et al., 2011 ). Indeed, neuroimaging studies have shown similarities between neural basis of moral and legal decision-making in professional attorneys, suggesting a considerable overlap in cognitive processing between both normative processes (Schleim et al., 2011 ). These partial overlaps between moral and legal decision-making highlight the potential translational implications of our results. The legal system must regulate sources of bias in defendants, jurors, attorneys, and judges (Greely, 2011 ). Our results provide unique evidence that judges and attorneys are less impacted by typical biases in third-party morally laden decisions. Thus, results support a “bias-reduced” approach to law (Gewirtz, 1996 ), at least regarding the effects of language manipulations and associated physiological signals. Our results may have implications in countries that use juries as part of their legal system. Although it has been questioned whether judges should withhold relevant evidence from jurors, fearing that they would use it in an impermissible manner (e.g., Pettys, 2008 ), our results provide empirical support to formal postulates such as the following one, from the United States Federal Rules of Evidence: “ The court may exclude relevant evidence if its probative value is substantially outweighed by a danger of one or more of the following: unfair prejudice, confusing the issues, misleading the jury, undue delay, wasting time, or needlessly presenting cumulative evidence” . Endorsing this rule, our results suggest that ordinary citizens (who can be potential jurors) are more biased than judges in the face of language manipulations and associated physiological states.

In addition, we found that judges and attorneys are not impervious to the “harm-magnification effect”: just like controls, these experts overestimated the damage caused by intentional harms (Ames and Fiske, 2013 , 2015 ; Darley and Huff, 1990 ). This result may have important implications, since the harm-magnification effect may inflate legal sentences (Ames and Fiske, 2013 ; Darley and Huff, 1990 ). Indeed, intentional damage to property is judged as more expensive than accidental damage (Ames and Fiske, 2013 ; Darley and Huff, 1990 ). This finding is in line with previous reports showing that decisions of legal experts may be affected by several biases (Englich et al., 2006 ; Guthrie et al., 2001 ; Rachlinski et al., 2008 , 2015 ; Wistrich et al., 2015 ). Also, our result aligns with the suggestion (Burns, 2016 ; Tsaoussi and Zervogianni, 2010 ) that judicial decisions are not immune to the impact of “bounded rationality”. This term refers to the concept that “human cognitive abilities are not infinite” (Simon, 1955 ) and, therefore, people take short-cuts in decision-making which may not be considered rational. Thus, the bias towards overestimation of damage caused by intentional harm is an important issue that should be explicitly acknowledged in legal settings or even in law instruction programs. Indeed, it has been shown that although judges may carry racial biases, they are able to suppress them when motivated and explicitly instructed to monitor their own implicit biases (Rachlinski et al., 2008 ).

In conclusion, this is the first study to examine whether different dimensions (morality, punishment, and harm severity) of judges and attorneys’ decisions are biased by information about the transgressor’s mental state, the use of GL in describing harmful events, or their own physiological states. We found that judges and attorneys’ decisions are not affected by the use of GL or physiological signals, and are accurately sensitive to the information on the transgressor’s mental state. Judges and attorneys seem to be more skilled than controls at identifying accidental harms, which contribute to more fair punishment assignments. However, judges and attorneys are not immune to the harm-magnification effect. Our results offer new details about how expertise can shape the minds of legal decision makers, paving the way for promising new research into the cognitive and physiological factors associated with legal decision-making. Present results could inspire new ecological designs tracking the potential effects of the transgressor’s mental state, language manipulations, and physiological signals in legal decision makers.

Participants

One hundred and sixty-nine participants took part in the study. The judges’ group included 45 subjects who had held the position of judge in the field of criminal law (mean age = 44.17, SD = 8.98). The attorneys’ group included 60 attorneys with experience in litigation in the field of criminal law (mean age = 37.06, SD = 9.98). Three attorneys had received graduate education in criminal law. On average, participants in the judges’ group had 19.09 (SD = 9.81) years of work experience in criminal law, whereas attorneys had 13 years (SD = 11.17). Sixty-four community members with a mixed educational background (mean age = 41.39, SD = 11.84) were recruited for the control group. All of them lacked a law degree, professional qualifications in the field, and work experience related to criminal law. The three groups did not differ statistically in terms of sex (chi-squared = 0.44, p  = 0.79). However, there were group differences in terms of years of education ( F 2,166  = 11.65, p  = 0.00002) and age ( F 2,166  = 6.20, p  = 0.02). Controls had significantly fewer years of education than judges ( p  = 0.00003) and attorneys ( p  = 0.001), but no difference was found between the latter two groups ( p  = 0.39). Regarding age, attorneys were significantly younger than judges ( p  = 0.001), but controls did not differ from judges ( p  = 0.35) or attorneys ( p  = 0.07). All participants were native Spanish speakers. Participants with visual disabilities, history of substance abuse, and neurological or psychiatric disorders were excluded.

The study included participants from Colombia and Argentina. We obtained measurements of general cognitive state, executive functioning (see Table S1 and Materials and methods SI ), and ECG recordings from a subsample of Colombian participants ( n  = 86). This subsample included 30 attorneys, 27 controls, and 29 judges and was assessed individually in an isolated office. The remaining participants ( n  = 83) completed the experiment online (see Materials and methods SI ) .

The three groups of this subsample did not differ statistically in terms of years of education, sex, global cognitive functioning, and executive functioning (see Table S1 ). Nevertheless, attorneys were significantly younger than judges and controls. Therefore, we calculated mixed ANCOVA models for all ratings including years of education and age as a covariate.

The study was approved by the institutions’ ethical committees and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided informed consent prior to the experimental procedures, as well as relevant information such as socio-demographic data, past job experience, and medical antecedents. After that, participants undertook the experiment individually.

Moral decision-making task

Participants completed a modified computerized version of a task tapping moral evaluation, punishment assignment, and harm assessment (Treadway et al., 2014 ). The instrument comprised 24 core scenarios involving two characters: a protagonist that inflicted harm and a victim that suffered that harm. Here, harm refers to physical damage to people or property. Specifically, the text-based scenarios varied in terms of the degree of harm, and were divided into three categories: property damage, physical harm (assault or maiming), and death. From each stem scenario, we employed four variation scenarios that differed in the intentionality of the transgressor (accidental vs. intentional) and the language used to describe harm (gruesome vs. plain).

The four scenario variations were the following: intentional harm/plain language (intentional-PL), accidental harm/plain language (accidental-PL), intentional harm/gruesome language (intentional-GL), and accidental harm/gruesome language (accidental-GL). Each subject read a given stem scenario only once. Participants assigned to the PL condition read only scenarios with descriptions of harm in PL. On the contrary, participants assigned to the GL condition read only scenarios describing harm through gruesome terms. Critically, the GL and PL conditions were identical except for the language used to describe harm (see Fig. 1 for an example of the language manipulation).

All participants read 12 intentional and 12 accidental scenarios, which were presented in a pseudorandomized order. With the objective of mitigating possible order effects, we counterbalanced the presentation of intentional and accidental scenarios across participants. Therefore, there were four versions of the task in total, two for each language condition and, within each language condition, two versions that reversed the order of accidental and intentional scenarios. Such counterbalancing of intentional and accidental scenarios guaranteed that the degree of harm was equivalent between the accidental and intentional conditions across participants. In summary, this experiment consisted of a 2 × 2 × 3 design, with language and group as the between-subjects factors, and intentionality as the within-subjects factor.

After reading each story, participants answered three questions by choosing a number from a Likert-like scale using the keyboard. In the first question, participants were asked to rate how morally adequate the transgressor’s action was (morality rating, 1 = “entirely wrong”, 9 = “entirely good”). To analyze the data, we inverted this scale to make the comparison between ratings more intuitive. Thus, for reported results, morality ratings ranged from 1 (“entirely good”, 9 = “entirely wrong”). The second required participants to quantify the amount of punishment the transgressor deserved (punishment rating, 1= “no punishment”, 9= “severe punishment”). The final question asked participants to assess the severity of harm that was caused (how harmful was the action? harm severity rating, 1 = “no harm”, 9 = “very harmful”).

Effects of intentionality, language, and crime type were tested in an initial pilot study conducted to validate our materials (see Supplementary methods, SII ). Results of this pilot study showed that morality, punishment, and harm severity ratings were higher for intentional harms than accidental ones. GL showed a significant effect only on morality ratings. Regarding the types of crime, across morality, punishment, and harm severity, participants assigned higher ratings to death compared to property damage scenarios. For morality and harm severity, participants also provided higher ratings to death compared to physical harm scenarios. For harm severity, ratings were also higher to physical harm than property damage.

Behavioral data analysis

Behavioral data (morality, punishment, and damage ratings) were analyzed using R version 3.5.2. All statistical tests used were two-sided, unless explicitly stated. The significance level was set at 0.05 for all tests. To assess the potential interactions between group, language, and intentionality, we employed mixed ANOVAs. The generalized eta-squared was used as a measure of effect size. Normality of studentized residuals of these models was evaluated using quantile–quantile plots and the Shapiro–Wilk test. Since the assumptions of normality and homogeneity of variances were not met, we transformed morality and harmfulness ratings by applying the Box–Cox power transformations (Box and Cox, 1964 ; Sakia, 1992 ). A maximum-likelihood procedure allowed us to estimate the lambda coefficients of those transformations. Such transformations increased the fit of the studentized residuals to a normal distribution and also proved to stabilize variance.

Furthermore, given that groups differed in terms of age and years of education, and that these two variables may have an effect on moral decision-making (Al-Nasari, 2002 ; Krettenauer et al., 2014 ; Maxfield et al., 2007 ; Rosen et al., 2016 ), we calculated mixed ANCOVA models for all ratings, taking group, language, and intentionality as factors, and age and years of education as covariates. We reported p -values and statistics from the post-hoc test of the mixed ANCOVA models. Normality and homoscedasticity criteria were not fully met even after data transformation. Therefore, we verified all ANOVA results using the Welch–James statistic for robust testing under heterocedasticity and non-normality, with 0.2 mean trimming, Winsorized variances, and bootstrapping for calculating the empirical critical value (Keselman et al., 2003 ; Villacorta, 2017 ; Wilcox, 2011 ). Results were almost identical to those of the mixed ANOVA models (see Results SI). To further decompose significant interactions and evaluate significant main effects, we employed Tukey-adjusted pairwise comparisons of least-square means as a post-hoc test for the mixed ANOVAs. In addition, follow-up tests for significant interactions were verified with planned comparisons using a non-parametric test (Wilcoxon), with Holm–Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons. Results of those non-parametric follow-up tests were virtually the same to the post-hoc contrasts of the mixed ANOVA models.

A power analysis showed that with an effect size of 0.25, α  = 0.05, and a power of 80%, a sample size of 158 participants was required. This assumption was met, since behavioral data analyses were performed on 169 participants, yielding a power of 0.83.

In addition, to explore the association between years of work experience in criminal law of judges and attorneys and moral decision-making, we calculated three linear regression models that included this variable as predictor. Group (judges and attorneys), language, and age were also included as predictors. The models encompassed average morality (morality ratings averaged over intentionality conditions), accidental punishment (punishment ratings in response to accidental harms), and severity ratings for accidental harms as dependent variables.

Physiological data analysis

From participants’ ECG recordings, we extracted the LF (0.04–0.15 Hz) power component of HRV (see SI: Materials and methods for details). We calculated LF power during the baseline period (5 min). Also, we estimated LF power over several contiguous 5-min recording windows during the task, and then computed the average power in this band across the windows (García-Martínez et al., 2017 ). Importantly, groups did not differ in the length of the task recordings (control, mean duration = 1325.4 s, SD = 306.8; attorneys, mean duration = 1401.4 s, SD = 309.2; judges, mean duration = 1411.3 s, SD = 313.7; F 2, 83  = 0.53, p  = 0.53). Given that the distribution of LF power was highly skewed, we log-transformed this variable to diminish the impact of outlying observations (Electrophysiology, 1996 ).

Power in the LF band is primarily generated by the vagal control of heart function (Billman, 2013 ; Goldstein et al., 2011 ; Reyes Del Paso et al., 2013 ), and provides information about blood pressure regulatory mechanisms (Goldstein et al., 2011 ; Reyes Del Paso et al., 2013 ). Moreover, LF power proves sensitive to emotional activation (Castaldo, 2015 ; Kop et al., 2011 ; Mccraty et al., 1995 ). In particular, psychological stress is associated to a LF power reduction when the task involves movement of the hands to control a keyboard (Hjortskov et al., 2004 ; Taelman et al., 2011 ; Yu and Zhang, 2012 ). In consequence, we expected that LF power would diminish with increments in arousal, which presented an opportunity to test our primary hypothesis concerning GL (Bright and Goodman-Delahunty, 2006 ; Treadway et al., 2014 ).

To understand the association between LF power, EFs, and age on group differences during the task, we calculated linear regression models that included those variables as predictors. We computed the percentage change of LF power, from baseline to task, to standardize this measure for each participant. Age was included in those models to control for significant age differences among groups (see Supplementary Table S1 ). The models included average morality (morality ratings averaged over intentionality conditions), accidental punishment (punishment ratings in response to accidental harms), and mean damage (damage ratings averaged over intentionality conditions) as dependent variables. In the three multivariate linear regression analyses controls were used as the reference group. Also, GL was the reference condition in the average morality model. We transformed dependent variables by applying the Box–Cox power transformations, to increase the fit of the models’ residuals to a normal distribution. A maximum-likelihood procedure allowed us to estimate the lambda coefficients of each transformation.

A second power analysis showed that with an effect size of 0.25, α  = 0.05, and a power of 80%, a sample size of 79 participants was required for these multiple regression analyses. This assumption was met, there were performed on a subsample of 86 participants, yielding a power of 0.95.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Consejo Seccional de la Judicatura (Bogotá, Colombia), the Colegio de Defensores Públicos (Bogotá, Colombia), and the Laboratorio Interdisciplinar de Ciencias y Procesos Humanos (LINCIPH), Facultad de Ciencias Sociales y Humanas de la Universidad Externado for supporting the data collection process. This work was partially supported by Universidad de los Andes; CONICET; FONCYT-PICT [grant numbers 2017-1818, 2017-1820]; ANID/FONDAP [grant number 15150012]; Programa Interdisciplinario de Investigación Experimental en Comunicación y Cognición (PIIECC), Facultad de Humanidades, USACH; Alzheimer’s Association GBHI ALZ UK-20-639295; and the Multi-Partner Consortium to Expand Dementia Research in Latin America (ReDLat), funded by the National Institutes of Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01AG057234, an Alzheimer’s Association grant (SG-20-725707-ReDLat), the Rainwater Foundation, and the Global Brain Health Institute. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health, Alzheimer’s Association, Rainwater Charitable Foundation, or Global Brain Health Institute.

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SB, JM-C, HS-G, AMG, DP, and AI developed the study concept and the study design. SB, MP-S, JCC, DMA, DP, MLG-G, and MH performed testing and data collection. SB and MP-S performed the data analysis and interpretation under the supervision of AI. SB and MP-S drafted the manuscript. JM-C, DMA, JCC, HS-G, DP, MLG-G, MH, AMG, and AI provided critical revisions. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

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Baez, S., Patiño-Sáenz, M., Martínez-Cotrina, J. et al. The impact of legal expertise on moral decision-making biases. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 7 , 103 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00595-8

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• Indian J Anaesth
• v.60(9); 2016 Sep

Legal and ethical issues in research

Camille yip.

1 Department of Women's Anaesthesia, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Bukit Timah, Singapore

Nian-Lin Reena Han

2 Division of Clinical Support Services, KK Women's and Children's Hospital, Bukit Timah, Singapore

Ban Leong Sng

3 Anesthesiology and Perioperative Sciences Academic Clinical Program, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore

Legal and ethical issues form an important component of modern research, related to the subject and researcher. This article seeks to briefly review the various international guidelines and regulations that exist on issues related to informed consent, confidentiality, providing incentives and various forms of research misconduct. Relevant original publications (The Declaration of Helsinki, Belmont Report, Council for International Organisations of Medical Sciences/World Health Organisation International Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects, World Association of Medical Editors Recommendations on Publication Ethics Policies, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, CoSE White Paper, International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use-Good Clinical Practice) form the literature that are relevant to the ethical and legal aspects of conducting research that researchers should abide by when conducting translational and clinical research. Researchers should note the major international guidelines and regional differences in legislation. Hence, specific ethical advice should be sought at local Ethics Review Committees.

INTRODUCTION

The ethical and legal issues relating to the conduct of clinical research involving human participants had raised the concerns of policy makers, lawyers, scientists and clinicians for many years. The Declaration of Helsinki established ethical principles applied to clinical research involving human participants. The purpose of a clinical research is to systematically collect and analyse data from which conclusions are drawn, that may be generalisable, so as to improve the clinical practice and benefit patients in future. Therefore, it is important to be familiar with Good Clinical Practice (GCP), an international quality standard that is provided by the International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH),[ 1 ] or the local version, GCP of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (India's equivalent of US Food and Drug Administration)[ 2 ] and local regulatory policy to ensure that the research is conducted both ethically and legally. In this article, we will briefly review the legal and ethical issues pertaining to recruitment of human subjects, basic principles of informed consent and precautions to be taken during data and clinical research publications. Some of the core principles of GCP in research include defining responsibilities of sponsors, investigators, consent process monitoring and auditing procedures and protection of human subjects.[ 3 ]

ISSUES RELATED TO THE RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS

The main role of human participants in research is to serve as sources of data. Researchers have a duty to ‘protect the life, health, dignity, integrity, right to self-determination, privacy and confidentiality of personal information of research subjects’.[ 4 ] The Belmont Report also provides an analytical framework for evaluating research using three ethical principles:[ 5 ]

• Respect for persons – the requirement to acknowledge autonomy and protect those with diminished autonomy
• Beneficence – first do no harm, maximise possible benefits and minimise possible harms
• Justice – on individual and societal level.

Mistreatment of research subjects is considered research misconduct (no ethical review approval, failure to follow approved protocol, absent or inadequate informed consent, exposure of subjects to physical or psychological harm, exposure of subjects to harm due to unacceptable research practices or failure to maintain confidentiality).[ 6 ] There is also scientific misconduct involving fraud and deception.

Consent, possibility of causing harm

Based on ICH definition, ‘informed consent is a process by which a subject voluntarily confirms his or her willingness to participate in a particular trial, after having been informed of all aspects of the trial that are relevant to the subject's decision to participate’. As for a standard (therapeutic) intervention that carries certain risks, informed consent – that is voluntary, given freely and adequately informed – must be sought from participants. However, due to the research-centred, rather than patient-centred primary purpose, additional relevant information must be provided in clinical trials or research studies in informed consent form. The essential components of informed consent are listed in Table 1 [Adapted from ICH Harmonised Tripartite Guideline, Guideline for Good Clinical Practice E6(R1)].[ 1 ] This information should be delivered in the language and method that individual potential subjects can understand,[ 4 ] commonly in the form of a printed Participant Information Sheet. Informed consent is documented by means of written, signed and dated informed consent form.[ 1 ] The potential subjects must be informed of the right to refuse to participate or withdraw consent to participate at any time without reprisal and without affecting the patient–physician relationship. There are also general principles regarding risk assessment, scientific requirements, research protocols and registration, function of ethics committees, use of placebo, post-trial provisions and research publication.[ 4 ]

Essential components of an informed consent

Special populations

Informed consent may be sought from a legally authorised representative if a potential research subject is incapable of giving informed consent[ 4 ] (children, intellectual impairment). The involvement of such populations must fulfil the requirement that they stand to benefit from the research outcome.[ 4 ] The ‘legally authorised representative’ may be a spouse, close relative, parent, power of attorney or legally appointed guardian. The hierarchy of priority of the representative may be different between different countries and different regions within the same country; hence, local guidelines should be consulted.

Special case: Emergency research

Emergency research studies occur where potential subjects are incapacitated and unable to give informed consent (acute head trauma, cardiac arrest). The Council for International Organisations of Medical Sciences/World Health Organisation guidelines and Declaration of Helsinki make exceptions to the requirement for informed consent in these situations.[ 4 , 7 ] There are minor variations in laws governing the extent to which the exceptions apply.[ 8 ]

Reasonable efforts should have been made to find a legal authority to consent. If there is not enough time, an ‘exception to informed consent’ may allow the subject to be enrolled with prior approval of an ethical committee.[ 7 ] Researchers must obtain deferred informed consent as soon as possible from the subject (when regains capacity), or their legally authorised representative, for continued participation.[ 4 , 7 ]

Collecting patient information and sensitive personal information, confidentiality maintenance

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act has requirements for informed consent disclosure and standards for electronic exchange, privacy and information security. In the UK, generic legislation is found in the Data Protection Act.[ 9 ]

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations suggest that authors must ensure that non-essential identifying information (names, initials, hospital record numbers) are omitted during data collection and storage wherever possible. Where identifying information is essential for scientific purposes (clinical photographs), written informed consent must be obtained and the patient must be shown the manuscript before publication. Subjects should also be informed if any potential identifiable material might be available through media access.

Providing incentives

Cash or other benefits ‘in-kind’ (financial, medical, educational, community benefits) should be made known to subjects when obtaining informed consent without emphasising too much on it.[ 7 ] Benefits may serve as appreciation or compensation for time and effort but should not result in the inducement to participation.[ 10 ] The amount and nature of remuneration should be compared to norms, cultural traditions and are subjected to the Ethical Committee Review.[ 7 ]

ISSUES RELATED TO THE RESEARCHER

Legal issues pertaining to regulatory bodies.

Various regulatory bodies have been constituted to uphold the safety of subjects involved in research. It is imperative to obtain approval from the appropriate regulatory authorities before proceeding to any research. The constitution and the types of these bodies vary nation-wise. The researchers are expected to be aware of these authorities and the list of various bodies pertinent to India are listed in the article “Research methodology II” of this issue.

Avoiding bias, inappropriate research methodology, incorrect reporting and inappropriate use of information

Good, well-designed studies advance medical science development. Poorly conducted studies violate the principle of justice, as there are time and resources wastage for research sponsors, researchers and subjects, and undermine the societal trust on scientific enquiry.[ 11 ] The Guidelines for GCP is an international ethical and scientific quality standard for designing, conducting, recording and reporting trials.[ 1 ]

Fraud in research and publication

De novo data invention (fabrication) and manipulation of data (falsification)[ 6 ] constitute serious scientific misconduct. The true prevalence of scientific fraud is difficult to measure (2%–14%).[ 12 ]

Plagiarism and its checking

Plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas or intellectual property without attribution or permission and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source.[ 13 ] Tools such as similarity check[ 14 ] are available to aid researchers detect similarities between manuscripts, and such checks should be done before submission.[ 15 ]

Overlapping publications

Duplicate publications violate international copyright laws and waste valuable resources.[ 16 , 17 ] Such publications can distort evidence-based medicine by double-counting of data when inadvertently included in meta-analyses.[ 16 ] This practice could artificially enlarge one's scientific work, distorting apparent productivity and may give an undue advantage when competing for research funding or career advancement.[ 17 ] Examples of these practices include:

Duplicate publication, redundant publication

Publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published, without reference to the previous publication.[ 11 ]

Salami publication

Slicing of data from a single research process into different pieces creating individual manuscripts from each piece to artificially increase the publication volume.[ 16 ]

Such misconduct may lead to retraction of articles. Transparent disclosure is important when submitting papers to journals to declare if the manuscript or related material has been published or submitted elsewhere, so that the editor can decide how to handle the submission or to seek further clarification. Further information on acceptable secondary publication can be found in the ICMJE ‘Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publishing of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals’.

Usually, sponsors and authors are required to sign over certain publication rights to the journal through copyright transfer or a licensing agreement; thereafter, authors should obtain written permission from the journal/publisher if they wish to reuse the published material elsewhere.[ 6 ]

Authorship and its various associations

The ICMJE recommendation lists four criteria of authorship:

• Substantial contributions to the conception of design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data for the work
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
• Final approval of the version to be published
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Authors and researchers have an ethical obligation to ensure the accuracy, publication and dissemination of the result of research,[ 4 ] as well as disclosing to publishers relevant corrections, retractions and errata, to protect scientific integrity of published evidence. Every research study involving human subjects must be registered in a publicly accessible database (e.g., ANZCTR [Australia and NZ], ClinicalTrials.gov [US and non-US], CTRI [India]) and the results made publicly available.[ 4 ] Sponsors of clinical trials must allow all study investigators and manuscript authors access to the full study data set and the right to use all study data for publication.[ 5 ] Source documents (containing trial data) and clinical study report (results and interpretation of trial) form part of the essential documentation that must be retained for a length of time prescribed by the applicable local legislation.[ 1 ] The ICMJE is currently proposing a requirement of authors to share with others de-identified individual patient data underlying the results presented in articles published in member journals.[ 18 ]

Those who have contributed to the work but do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged; some of these activities include provision of administrative support, writing assistance and proofreading. They should have their written permission sought for their names to be published and disclose any potential conflicts of interest.[ 6 ] The Council of Scientific Editors has identified several inappropriate types of authorship, such as guest authorship, honorary or gift authorship and ghost authorship.[ 6 ] Various interventions should be put in place to prevent such fraudulent practices in research.[ 19 ] The list of essential documents for the conduct of a clinical trial is included in other articles of the same issue.

The recent increase in research activities has led to concerns regarding ethical and legal issues. Various guidelines have been formulated by organisations and authorities, which serve as a guide to promote integrity, compliance and ethical standards in the conduct of research. Fraud in research undermines the quality of establishing evidence-based medicine, and interventions should be put in place to prevent such practices. A general overview of ethical and legal principles will enable research to be conducted in accordance with the best practices.

Financial support and sponsorship

Conflicts of interest.

There are no conflicts of interest.

AI and law: ethical, legal, and socio-political implications

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We live in interesting times. Humanity has witnessed unprecedented technological advances with respect to artificial intelligence (AI), which now impacts our daily lives through e.g. our smartphones and the Internet of Things. AI determines the result of our credit and loan applications; in the United States, it often informs parole decisions; and it pervades our work environments.

In recent decades, we have seen the positive effects of AI in almost every area of our lives, but we have also encountered significant ethical and legal challenges in such areas as autonomous transportation, machine bias, and the black box problem. Concerns have also arisen regarding the rapid development and increasing use of smart technologies, particularly with respect to their impact on fundamental rights (Gordon 2020 ).

This special issue provides an excellent overview of current debates in the realm of AI and law. It contains timely and original articles that thoroughly examine the ethical, legal, and socio-political implications of AI and law as viewed from various academic perspectives, such as philosophy, theology, law, medicine, and computer science. The issues covered include, for example, the key concept of personhood and its legal and ethical dimensions, AI in healthcare, legal regulation of AI, and the legal and ethical issues related to autonomous systems.

In my view, the papers reveal among other things—perhaps not surprisingly—that the current legal system is ill-equipped to solve the hot issues created by the ever-increasing technological advances in AI. In other words, we need proper AI regulation to deal with such present and anticipated issues as machine bias and legal decision making, electronic personhood, and legal responsibility concerning autonomous machines (e.g., autonomous transportation). We could refer to the needed framework as a General AI Law (GAIL). By nature, AI does not stop at national borders; it is inherently global. Therefore, humanity needs a global approach to solve the legal problems that AI poses. Many of the papers in this special issue provide interesting solutions to persistent problems and thereby attempt to shape the ongoing debates quite substantially.

Most domains of human life are, legally speaking, highly regulated. However, today’s attorneys and judges are, for the most part, not quite literate with regard to the implications of AI for law, the legal system, and legal education. To address the changes resulting from the growing application of AI, we must revise our legal curricula. However, one can make effective changes to a system only if one has a proper understanding of the issues at hand. Updating professional legal education in this area will greatly benefit society, since it will enable legal experts to provide better service and to support policymakers in creating the needed GAIL.

It is impossible for me, in this brief editorial, to do justice to all the papers contained in this special issue, but I would like to briefly highlight two important topics that are either explicitly or implicitly addressed in many of the papers. The first topic, which is examined explicitly by several authors, concerns the concept of personhood. Kestutis Mosakas defends, quite convincingly in my view, the traditional consciousness criterion for moral status in the context of social robots, in opposition to some rival approaches including Gunkel’s ( 2012 ) famous social-relational approach. Joshua Jowitt, on the other hand, adheres to a Kantian-oriented concept of agency as the basis for legal personhood and thereby offers a moral foundation for the ongoing legal debate over ascribing legal personhood to robots. When reading Jowitt, however, we should keep in mind that the concept of agency necessarily presupposes consciousness, since it seems impossible that an entity that lacks consciousness could be deemed a responsible agent. The reverse is not true; consciousness may, at some point, lead to agency but does not presuppose it.

The concept of personhood is also examined from different vantage points in a joint paper by David Gunkel (from the field of philosophy) and Jordan Wales (from theology). While Gunkel defends his well-known phenomenological approach to moral robots, Wales argues against this approach by claiming that robots are not “natural” persons by definition. This is because they are not endowed with consciousness and are not oriented toward a self-aware inter-subjectivity, which Wales sees as the basis for compassion toward fellow persons. In general, the interesting debate between Gunkel and Wales displays quite prominently the different lines of argumentation with respect to the concept of personhood.

Finally, on this first topic, John-Stewart Gordon provides a substantial analysis of the concepts of moral and legal personhood and also examines their complex relation. He concludes that current robots do not qualify for personhood but that future robots may do so based on their technological sophistication. Gordon, like Jowitt, claims that one should use a uniform criterion to determine the eligibility of all entities for moral status, without making any exceptions—for example, regarding how the entity came into existence. Ultimately, the concept of personhood—whatever that means in detail—is the very foundation of our moral and legal rights. If robots meet this threshold at some point, then it is no longer up to us to decide whether they are eligible for a moral status and rights; they must be viewed as entitled to this eligibility based on their capabilities, independently of our say-so.

This leads us to the second topic that underlies much of the discussion in this special issue—the meaning of moral agency for AI machines. This topic is quite significant with respect to the whole idea of holding intelligent machines or robots morally responsible for their actions. However, many of the papers in this special issue sidestep this point without addressing it directly, either because the authors believe that, at some future point, robots will become moral agents or because their analysis does not require artificial moral agency in the first place. An exception is the provocative paper by Carissa Veliz, who defends the view that algorithms or machines are not moral agents. Her line of reasoning is as follows: Conscious experience or sentience is necessary for moral agency, and since algorithms are not sentient by nature, they are therefore not moral agents. To prove her point, Veliz claims that algorithms are similar to moral zombies, and since moral zombies are not moral agents, one is justified in claiming that the same is true for algorithms. As she states, “Only beings who can experience pain and pleasure can understand what it means to inflict pain or cause pleasure, and only those with this moral understanding can be moral agents.”

My very brief response to Veliz is that, indeed, current intelligent and autonomous machines lack moral agency given their limited capabilities but that this may change over time. Her particular view that sentience is necessary for moral agency is, at least in my view, to some degree misleading, since it would rule out those human beings who reportedly suffer from congenital analgesia and are therefore unable to experience sensations such as pain. Whether such people can fully understand what pain is remains an open question; quite similar to the question of whether people who are congenitally colour-blind can understand what colour vision really is. However, it seems clear that people with congenital analgesia do understand that it is morally wrong to intentionally inflict pain on others. Their understanding seems to be based on their intellectual capacity to imagine what pain could mean for other people, rather than on any personal experience of pain. Therefore, I am rather hesitant to agree that sentience is, in general, necessary for moral agency. Footnote 1

I would like to thank the contributing authors for their excellent and challenging papers, which hold great promise to shape this emerging field significantly. I am also deeply thankful to all referees for their outstanding job in providing detailed and helpful comments. I hope that this special issue will provide a good start for discussing some of our most challenging current legal and ethical problems related to AI. This is not the end; this is the beginning.

I believe that this is only one possible counterexample among others, but this editorial is not the place to engage in a further response to Veliz’s paper.

Gordon J-S (ed) (2020) Smart technologies and fundamental rights. Brill/Rodopi, Leiden

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Gunkel D (2012) The machine question: critical perspectives on AI, robots, and ethics. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass

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Gordon, JS. AI and law: ethical, legal, and socio-political implications. AI & Soc 36 , 403–404 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01194-0

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Accepted : 18 March 2021

Published : 26 March 2021

Issue Date : June 2021

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01194-0

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Key books: A list of useful legal research textbooks which can be used in addition to your prescribed resources.

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How to write a legal research paper: All you need to know

This article on “How to write a legal research paper: All you need to know” was written by Vridhi Rai, an intern at Legal Upanishad.

Introduction:

Law is all about analysis, critical thinking, and interpretation. Your capability to put together the analysis of the study of the issues in written form is essential in the practice of law. The research paper is one such way to express your creative and analytic thought process, your vision of the theme, and the originality of your content. The word ‘research’ means a systematic examination of material facts. It can be complex and daunting for law students. But research helps in enhancing your knowledge and cultivating your writing skills. This article will help you understand what is research paper all about and how to write a research paper.

What is a research paper?

A research paper is a piece of academic writing which is based on an author’s original composition in the research and the findings on a given theme or topic. The writing should be owned by the author himself or herself. A good research paper strives to convey the information traced by the author crisply and concisely. The paper is written to examine the theme or the provisions, present your stand on it, and showcase evidence in support in a systematic manner. The true nature of the paper shows you the purpose of the theme or topic. 

What is the aim of the legal research paper?

The aim of the legal research paper can be a subjective question since the writing will indicate what the intended outcome is. There are kinds of writings that would pave a way for courts because it geared toward a certain kind of doctrinal analysis of the court’s interaction with theory and practice. The writings are done for better interpretation of the law. It could also be used to influence policy-making and generate debates. The author has a specific objective and intended audience in mind to serve.

How to write a legal research paper?

Step-1 choose a theme or topic:.

The foremost step in writing a  legal research paper is to select a theme or topic for the research. Select topics that catch your attention or interest. You can pick topics addressing contemporary issues or topics for the intended audience you wish to cater to. It should be novel, innovative, and interesting. While choosing a topic, read pertinent issues from different sources.  You can follow legal news to search for pertinent topics.

In case, you find difficulty selecting a topic, it will be wonderful for you to approach your professors, colleagues, and friends for consultation. Also, never feel hesitant to change the theme or topic of the research, if you feel it is not the right topic or you will not able to research the topic effectively.

Step-2 Research on your topic:

Now, your next task is to research the topic extensively on your selected topic from credible sources. You can refer to different sources by reading legal research pieces from books to online sites like SCC online, Manupatra, and Kluwer Arbitration. Always remember don’t just goggle. Use conventional sources like books and articles, these will give you a broader perspective. Read as much as you can. Reading helps you understand the nitty-gritty of the law provisions. Please beware of the research as this task can be very monotonous. You might lose motivation to perform this task. But hang in there and stay motivated to find interesting facts.

Step-3 Examine and Make a plan:

After researching, your very next step is to examine and make a plan to execute writing a legal research paper. Your research will be comprehensive with ideas. Please develop a detailed outline. Try adding notes to your research work. It can be possible that you might end up adding too much information to your paper. Highlight the key findings from your study. At this stage you are required to identify the goal of your research work, it can be either argumentative or analytic. You have to determine the masses you are wishing to address. The focus and the tone of the paper should b according to the audience you are intending to reach.

To get your Legal Research Paper written by an expert. Contact us.

Step-4 writing the paper:.

The next step is to draft the research paper. Make a final outline of the research work. The outline must have the points to describe the overview of the paper. The basic mantra of legal research is the structure of the paper. The research paper writing should be creative, clear, concise, and comprehensive. The language of your research paper should be easy to interpret. The legal terminologies and material facts are generally very sophisticated and complex. The facts, you are mentioning must be backed by shreds of evidence.

The format of the legal research paper:

The paper should have a proper format that consists of writing styles, referencing styles, page numbering, spacing, and margins. It should also include the headlines, sub-headlines, citations, or credits to the authors and the scholars.

The content of the legal research paper:

The content consists of the following:

Acknowledgment : the content of the paper should include an acknowledgment section that appreciates all the contributors to the research paper for their efforts and encouragement.

Table of contents: it includes the list of the things that you have written in your research paper.

Scope of the research: the scope or object of the research includes the reason for your study. It shows you the skeleton of your research paper. You have stated the problem or issue of the paper.

A literature survey or the sources used in the study: it includes the sources you have referred to in your study. It can be primary or secondary resources. The primary resources include books, statutes, and case laws. The secondary sources include the material you have collected from law articles, journals, and compendiums online or offline.

The hypothesis of the research: the hypothesis is the idea that is suggested to explain the objective of the research conducted by the researcher. It conveys the expectations of the researcher on what basis he started studying the issues, he raised in his paper.

Abstract : abstract shows the gist of the theme you have mentioned in your study. It is like the summary of the findings in your research regarding the theme. It should be written clearly and concisely.

Introduction: the introduction should be well-written to attract the attention of the audience toward the theme you mentioned in your thesis. A glance over the initial paragraphs gives an insight to the readers of your work. The introduction determines whether the research paper is worth reading or not. It should express the research problem, the purpose of your thesis, and background details about the issue you are referring to. It should be short, crisp, and comprehensive.

The main body of the study: the main focus of the paper is the main body of the thesis. The body should be divided into paragraphs along with sub-headings for a better understanding of the facts. Each paragraph should draw the main points of your study. It should begin with the topic’s sentences and should conclude extensively. In the main body, you can add the case laws and judgments.  

The conclusion of the study: the finale of the study should include a summary of the main pointers discussed in the study, it should express your stand or viewpoint towards the research problem. The concluding para of your research can be affirmative or negative in tone. In the end, you can add some suggestive measures to your study.

References or bibliography: at the end of the paper mention the references or the sources links or sites from which you have researched the material facts.

Step – 5 edit and proofread the final draft of the research paper:

Use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Proofreading will help you to find errors in your content. If you need, to make changes to the paper, check and find the logic and legality of the statement. At this stage, you check the plagiarism of your content.

The things that should be considered carefully before drafting the paper:

you need to check the validity of the judgments before mentioning them in the research paper. The validity of the bills mentioned in your study should be carefully considered. The errors related to applicability or jurisdictions should be carefully verified.

Conclusion:

Legal research is not an easy task to perform. It takes a lot of time to conduct it. Constant hard work, attention, motivation, and patience are the factors required to examine and analyze the details. It can be boring. But it will help you in brushing your skills. Your efforts and dedication toward finding more and more material facts will help in shaping you into a good researcher.

It is beneficial for law students for interpreting law provisions, policies, and judgments. It can be used as a medium to influence policy-making procedures and as a tool to aware the masses. Publication of your research papers will act as a stimulating force to your law career. It will help you build your confidence and help them transform into law professionals.

References:

• How to write a legal research paper: guide: how to write a winning research paper?- Legal Desire. Retrieved: https://legaldesire.com/guide-how-to-write-a-winning-research-paper/
• A helpful guide on writing a law research paper- Writing help. Retrieved: https://howtowrite.customwritings.com/post/law-research-paper-guide/
• How to begin with writing a legal research paper- Manupatra- youtube channel-(video file)
• How to write a legal research paper law?|research paper- Eminent law classes-(Video file)
• The aim of writing a legal research paper- the art of writing a legal research paper-Rohini Sen-letter of the law-(video file)

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Legal basis for processing data

This technical guidance has been produced for data protection officers, information governance officers and research governance managers. 

What is processing data?

Processing data includes doing any of the following to the data:

Organisations must have a valid, legal reason to process personal data. This is called a ‘legal basis’. This requirement is not new, however there are some important changes in the forthcoming legislation. Organisations have to record, and inform data subjects, what their legal basis for processing data is.

The legal basis that research organisations have used under the 1998 data protection legislation is most likely to support ‘legitimate interests’. Under GDPR, commercial companies and charitable research organisations will continue to use ‘legitimate interests’ as their legal basis.

However, public authorities (as defined in Freedom of Information legislation), when carrying out public tasks – such as research in NHS organisations, universities and Research Council institutes – will no longer be able to use ‘legitimate interests’. Instead, they will use ‘task in the public interest’ as their legal basis. Public authorities should document their justification for this, by reference to their public research purpose as established by statute or University Charter.

The new legislation does not introduce different standards between organisations that use ‘legitimate interests’ and organisations that use ‘task in the public interest’.

The legislation will also require research organisations to be explicit about which of the new legal bases they are using. Under the new legislation, you will need:

• a legal basis to process personal data; and
• an additional legal basis to process any ‘special category’ personal data (e.g. health information).

Legal basis and consent

Consent is an important part of the research process and is frequently sought for participation in research studies. One reason is to ensure that any disclosure of confidential information meets the requirements of the common law duty of confidentiality. Where consent is sought from research participants, they are normally told how information about them will be used.

Consent to participation in research is not the same as consent as the legal basis for processing under data protection legislation. An example is that a person is asked to consent to participate in research but is told that, if they agree to participate, data about them will be processed for a task in the public interest. The legal basis for data processing is not consent.

If you use consent as the legal basis for your processing and a participant withdraws their consent, you will not have a legal basis to process personal data about them. See the ICO guidance on consent  to understand the implications.

If you use 'task in the public interest', it does not automatically mean that the requirements of the common law duty of confidentiality have been met. The requirements of both data protection legislation and the common law duty of confidentiality must be satisfied. National guidance on confidentiality is unaffected by the GDPR (see the Information Governance Alliance’s GDPR guidance on consent  and information about the Confidentiality Advisory Group on the HRA website for more information).

Legal basis for processing personal data

Data controllers must already have a legal basis for processing personal data. However, the new data protection law makes some changes in this area. For example, organisations must now include the legal basis for processing in a ‘privacy notice’ (the information for data subjects about processing). This information should be given at the appropriate level. For example, the legal basis for a research organisation’s processing can be provided in corporate information but project-specific details about the purpose of the processing should belong in the participant information sheet for the individual research project. 

Legal basis for processing ‘special category’ personal data

‘Special category’ personal data is:

• data which reveals racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership
• data concerning health (the physical or mental health of a person, including the provision of health care services)
• data concerning sex life or sexual orientation
• genetic or biometric data processed to uniquely identify a natural person.

‘Genetic data’ means personal data relating to the inherited or acquired genetic characteristics of a natural person which give unique information about the physiology or the health of that natural person and which result, in particular, from an analysis of a biological sample from the natural person in question.

Whether processed by a public authority or by a commercial organisation or charitable research organisation, special category personal data can be processed for research purposes, but only if processing such data is:

• necessary for archiving purposes, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes,
• subject to appropriate safeguards ( Safeguards section ), and
• in the public interest.
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