Manifest Madness: Mental Incapacity in Criminal Law

ISBN-13: 9780199698592 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 312 str.

Arlie Loughnan

Opis

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.
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 the terrain of mental incapacity in criminal law is notoriously difficult; it involves tracing overlapping and interlocking legal doctrines, current and past practices including those of evidence and proof, and also medical and social understanding of mental order and incapacity. Bringing together previously disparate discussions on criminal responsibility from law, psychology, and philosophy, this book provides a close study of mental incapacity defences, analysing their development through historical cases to the modern era. It maps the shifting boundaries between normality and abnormality as constructed in law, arguing that 'manifest madness' - the distinct character of mental incapacity revealed by this interdisciplinary approach - has a broad significance for understanding the criminal law as a whole.

Recenzje

An important monograph, which contains a novel and thought provoking analysis of the role of mental incapacity in the criminal law. Underpinning her analysis with historical research, the author gives a unique insight into the nature and character of mental incapacity doctrines which takes the reader well beyond insanity and related defences to include infancy, intoxication, infanticide and unfitness to plead. The result is a book which will not only challenge and enlighten scholarly debate but also will help to stimulate and inform the current reform agenda.

O autorze

Dr Arlie Loughnan is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Sydney. Her research concerns criminal law and the criminal justice system, with a focus on the relationship between legal doctrines, practices, institutions, and knowledge. Her particular interests are criminal responsibility and non-responsibility, the interaction of legal and expert medical knowledges and the historical development of the criminal law. Dr Loughnan holds a PhD from LSE and an LLM from NYU Law School.