Manifest Madness: Mental Incapacity in the Criminal LawA PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via www.oup.com/uk as well as the OAPEN Library platform, www.oapen.org. It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license and is part of the OAPEN-UK research project. Whether it is a question of the age below which a child cannot be held liable for their actions, or the attribution of responsibility to defendants with mental illnesses, mental incapacity is a central concern for legal actors, policy makers, and legislators when it comes to crime and justice. Understanding mental incapacity in criminal law is notoriously difficult; it involves tracing overlapping and interlocking legal doctrines, current and past practices of evidence and proof, and also medical and social understandings of mental illness and incapacity. With its focus on the complex interaction of legal doctrines and practices relating to mental incapacity and knowledge - both expert and non-expert - of it, this book offers a fresh perspective on this topic. Bringing together previously disparate discussions on mental incapacity from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of this terrain of criminal law, analysing the development of mental incapacity doctrines through historical cases to the modern era. It maps the shifting boundaries around abnormality as constructed in law, arguing that the mental incapacity terrain has a distinct character - 'manifest madness'. |
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abnormality of mind actus reus alcohol argues basis Bratty Butler Report conceptual Cr App Crime and Insanity Criminal Law Review criminal liability criminal responsibility criminal trial decision Defences to Murder defendant’s diminished responsibility doli incapax England and Wales England Vol exculpatory mental incapacity excuses expert evidence expert knowledge expert medical formalization History Homicide Act 1957 House of Lords incapacity in criminal individual individual’s infanticide insane defendants insanity doctrine Insanity in England insanity plea intoxicated offending jury killing knowledge of madness Lacey Law Commission law on intoxicated lay knowledge Lord Denning Lord Elwyn-Jones M’Naghten Rules Majewski manifest madness manslaughter mens rea mental incapacity doctrines mental incapacity terrain moral offence Oxford Partial Defences plea practices prosecution psychiatric Reconstructing the Criminal reference relation role Scots law Scottish Law Commission significance social special verdict specific intent suggest terrain of mental unfitness to plead Walker Crime Woolmington