Free will: reconciling German civil law with Libet’s neurophysiological studies on the readiness potential


This paper states that it is inappropriate to build any implications for the free will and by extension to legal definition of criminal responsibility from the famous Libet’s experiment. However, even if we could take Libet’s results at face value, the paper shows that at least in the context of German law, the change in understanding free will would not impact the legal definition of responsibility.