LAW 7288
Last Updated
- Schedule of Classes - March 28, 2025 7:24PM EDT
- Course Catalog - March 28, 2025 7:07PM EDT
Classes
LAW 7288
Course Description
Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2024-2025.
This seminar explores the law of insanity in depth. After a preliminary discussion about abolishing the defense altogether, we will study: insanity before M'Naghten, the rule set forth in M'Naghten, the irresistible impulse test, and the product test. We then look at two academic proposals: according to one, insanity is a form of profound irrationality; according to the other, insanity is a lost sense of agency. We end with a look at psychopathy.
When Offered Fall.
Comments This is not a seminar on various forms of mental illness or how such illness would be diagnosed under DSM-V. Nor is it a seminar on mental health and the criminal law more generally. It is a seminar on the legal tests for insanity, and what that test should be in as much as it functions to defeat ascriptions of responsibility for criminal actions.