Automatism is never a defence

In 2009, Andrew Simester’s article ‘Intoxication is Never a Defence’ effectively highlighted a point he described as ‘a simple one, and not entirely new’; that despite the longstanding (and enduring) description of the intoxication rules as a defence, this is not (and never has been) accurate.1 The classification of intoxication as a defence is one of the criminal law’s more peculiar self-delusions, not least because of the generally uncontroversial reasons for reaching the opposite conclusion. This is not a point of pedantry. As Simester explains, the appropriate classification of the intoxication rules as inculpatory leads us to evaluate those rules through a different set of norms and (as a logical conclusion) to question whether the law would be better served by a new voluntary intoxication-based offence.2