EXPERTISE
Criminal Law & Procedure; Trial Advocacy
Comparative Constitutional Process
Ethics; Bioethics; Neuroethics
Neuroscience & the Law
Indigenous Law
FACULTY PROFILE
Dr. Janet Brewer is an Assistant Professor at Governors State University. She teaches undergraduate Comparative International Criminal Justice Systems, Judicial Process & Constitutional Issues, Critical Issues in Juvenile Justice, Exploring Ethics, Research Design, Crime Analysis, and Neuroscience & the Law. She also teaches graduate-level seminars, criminal law/mock trial, and qualitative research methods courses.
Dr. Brewer has over a decade of teaching experience both within the United States and abroad. She previously served as Head of the LLM in International Human Rights Law at England’s fourth-ranked law school, the University of Manchester. She also directed the LLB ‘law with criminology’ program and taught on the ground-breaking Intercalated BSc/MSc in Health Care Ethics & Law for medical students adjudged ‘outstanding.’
Dr. Brewer has taught undergraduate students in law and related fields, graduate-level students including supervision of doctoral candidates, medical students, health care professionals, and practicing solicitors seeking Higher Rights of Audience (HRA) as a solicitor advocate throughout England and Wales. Dr. Brewer’s former students are attorneys practicing medical law or criminal defense within many common law and mixed jurisdictions, including the United States, Canada, India, Great Britain, and the Caribbean.
RESEARCH AREAS OF INTEREST
Dr. Brewer’s main areas of research interest and scholarship include the intersection of neuroscience and the law, cross-cultural comparative law and Constitutional process, the biological bases of criminal offending, especially their impact upon the elements of mens rea and the jurisprudence of legal insanity--specifically the role that neuroscience plays in understanding free will, culpability, judicial decision-making and sentencing. From a health justice perspective, her research focuses on socially-identifiable and vulnerable populations involved in biotech research primarily undertaken by multinational pharmaceutical companies within the developing world.
Dr. Brewer has established herself as a valid researcher, having authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited over fifty publications in neuroscience, law, and related domains. Her scholarship concerning indigenous law and jurisprudence is indexed in the National Indian Law Library. She was previously named a ‘must-read legal scholar’ by the Defense Counsel Journal, International Association of Defense Counsel. Her innovative interdisciplinary research has been published in the Journal of Health & Biomedical Law and the American
Journal of Trial Advocacy. Her neuroscientific work recognizing an intersection between cancer genetics and catecholamine biosynthetic pathways continues to be a widely cited paper in psycho-oncology/molecular neuroscience.
Dr. Brewer received her Juris Doctor, Order of the Coif from DePaul College of Law where she was a member of the DePaul Law Review and was Executive Editor of the Journal of Health Care Law, and she holds a master's degree in molecular genetics from Harvard University. She served as Student Advisor on mitochondrial DNA evidence for DePaul’s Center for Law & Science; completed a legal externship at the American Medical Association (AMA), Division of Ethics Standards, Section of Genetics; and she served as a legal extern and Assistant to the Vice President of Legal Affairs, Center for Psychiatry & the Law, Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, Chicago (Isaac Ray Center). As a legal extern at the AMA, Dr. Brewer helped draft genetic testing guidelines and provided sound guidance to physicians' inquiries on the national ethics hotline. As an extern at Isaac Ray, Dr. Brewer managed outpatients who had been found not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) and reviewed police fitness for duty testing protocols to identify potential legal challenges pursuant to the American with Disabilities Act and the U.S. Constitution.
Dr. Brewer is both a neuropsychologist and an attorney with significant clinical and forensic experience. Example forensic case consultations include whether a teen who shot his mother should be tried as an adult and whether an elderly defendant was malingering dementia to avoid criminal prosecution. Her early clinical work at Chicago's Shirley Ryan AbilityLab involved cognitive rehabilitation of pediatric patients who were survivors of gang-related traumatic brain injury or gunshot wounds to the head. Supported by a grant to study fetal alcohol syndrome, Dr. Brewer worked among Southwestern reservations with troubled Native American youths, many of whom were involved in gangs and/or addicted to inhalants and other substances. Dr. Brewer also worked in a state-funded outreach program for cognitive rehabilitation of youths in corrections and adults in re-entry who evidenced neurocompromise to support education and employment. Dr. Brewer is admitted to practice law in the Circuit, Appellate, and Supreme courts of Illinois. She previously practiced law in Chicago and is a member of the Chicago Bar Association.
MEMBERSHIPS IN SOCIETIES
American Academy of Pediatric Neuropsychology
American Bar Association
- Solo Practice Division
- Behavioral & Neuroscience Law Committee
- Scientific Evidence Committee
American Psychological Association
- Division 40 Society of Clinical Neuropsychology
- Division 41 American Psychology-Law Society
Chicago Bar Association
International Academy of Law & Mental Health
International Bar Association
- Legal Practice Division: Law and Individual Rights Section
- Healthcare and Life Sciences Law Committee
- Indigenous Peoples Committee
- Public and Professional Interest Division: Rule of Law Forum
- Regional Forum: North American Regional Forum