Prof. Emily R.D. Murphy

Emily R.D. Murphy, PhD, JD
Professor of Law, Harry & Lillian Hastings Research Chair

University of California, College of the Law, San Francisco

Professor of Law and a behavioural neuroscientist. Research focuses on the intersection of neuroscience, behavioural science, and law. The current research agenda is focused on developing a concept called collective cognitive capital, which makes the case for analysing policies based, to a substantial extent, on their effects on the collective brain functioning of people in society. Put simply, it is good for human flourishing when our brains work well and work together.

She also writes about the use of neuroscience as evidence and how neuroscience and behavioural science should shape public policy and legal systems. Her work has been published in Stanford Law Review, The Journal of Law & the Biosciences, Connecticut Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, Law & Psychology Review, Psychology Public Policy & Law, and Science.

She studied for a PhD in behavioural neuroscience and psychopharmacology at the University of Cambridge, as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, right after her undergraduate degree in Psychology/Mind, Brain, Behaviour from Harvard. A planned career as a basic research scientist took a hard interdisciplinary turn, and she accepted a postdoc with the Program in Neuroethics at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, before moving to concurrent postdoc positions at Stanford Law School’s Center for Law and the Biosciences as well as the MacArthur Foundation’s Law and Neuroscience Project. 

Then, deciding that being a law professor was the best possible interdisciplinary academic career, she went to Stanford Law School for her JD. Following law school, she clerked for the Honourable Richard A. Paez of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and was a litigator for several years at Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP in Los Angeles. Prior to joining UC Law SF (then known as UC Hastings) in 2017, she spent a year as a fellow in the Program in Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence at UCLA Law School, where she taught a new course in Neuroscience & Law.