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In the last five years, a great deal has been learned about how human brains address the social problem of punishing wrongdoers. Although it is far too early to be confident that these insights will shed any practical light on criminal law or procedure, patterns are emerging that suggest a framework that someday could have significant legal and social consequences. In this chapter, we first survey the behavioural and theoretical evidence supporting the proposition that the willingness to blame then punish norm-violators is an evolved human trait. Then we sample the recent neuroscience literature on normative punishment, and follow that with a presentation of our neuropsychological model of blame and third-party punishment. We finish with a discussion of the potential implications a confirmed model might have for law and policy.

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