An agent’s responsibility for action has critical importance in both criminal and civil law. In a liberal society that favors negative liberty, the law permits maximum liberty and autonomy only to responsible agents.1 Generally unencumbered by legal regulation, they are free, for example, to make foolish, irrational and even dangerous life choices, such as refusing potentially life-saving medic...

This paper puts the famous story of Jekyll and Hyde to work for a specific analytic purpose. The question of responsibility for crime, complicated by the divided subjectivity implicit in Mr. Hyde’s appearance, and illuminated by Robert Louis Stevenson’s grasp of contemporary psychiatric, evolutionary, and medical thought as promising new technologies for effecting a distinction between criminal...

216 May 2009 Persons with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and related traits appear in many forensic psychiatry settings. Their clinical hallmarks affecting judgment, insight, impulsivity, motivations, and regulation of emotions, as well as their frequently chaotic lives (internal and external), inaccurate perceptions, rationalizations, and comorbid syndromes can have a marked effect on m...

penal populism researches have provided valuable data about characteristics of penal populist policies. generally, penal populist policies are tough, popular, symbolic, emotional and without scientific bases. penal populist reactions appear in the light of popular moves and emotional environment. these polices attempt to control criminal phenomena by penal mechanisms in a shortest possible time...

Following a report from the Secretary General in May 1993, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 827 and its Statute establishing an International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) located in The Hague, The Netherlands. Although such action has been discussed in the past, this is the first time the international community has established a tribunal to indict ...

men on the subject of insanity, that barristers are in the habit of making on occasions when they defend prisoners charged with criminal offences, could ever dissipate the dense obscurity which surrounds these subjects in the public mind. The legal profession generally, and especially the judges, have so little practical acquaintance with insanity, that their minds are absolutely unable to comp...

The mental health and criminal justice systems are two of the major control mechanisms in American society that often function together through related and interdependent structures to identify and control deviant behavior. Both systems employ coercive control. In addition, regardless of the specific form of the deviance, these control institutions also use informal social control to reinforce ...