PROBLEMS pertaining to concepts of legal and medical insanity have long been present and at times seem to defy solution. Differing views of justice, the impulse toward revenge, and the devices to expiate guilt of the individual and society complicate further the complex currents of any era. They were with us in the aftermath of the killing of a President and the condemnation of his alleged assa...

Through a statistical analysis of major changes in postacquittal procedures of the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1980 (IDRA 1980), the study reveals the Act's success in formalizing, regularizing, juridicizing, accelerating, and extending to all acquittees psychiatric examinations and review and release procedures. Although more persons are reviewed and released at postacquittal hearings than ...

No. In common usage they are considered legal concepts, because they represent specific judgments made by the courts. However, they also can be regarded as distinct medicolegal concepts. Although clinical data contribute to the determination of both competence and insanity, the determination also requires a knowledge of relevant statutes as well as a comprehensive analysis of both subjective an...

As debate over the function and administration of the insanity defense has heightened in recent years, abolition of the defense has become an increasingly serious alternative.' The Senate Committee on the Judiciary is now considering one such proposal. Section 522 of the proposed Criminal Justice Reform Act of 1975,2 popularly known as S. 1, states a viable defense if "the defendant, as a resul...

The metaphysician, though never so good a theorist, the physician, however sound a practitioner, must both give place to one who, sitting by the well of knowledge, dispenses with grace and justice to his thirsting brethren. He who, by opportunity and industry, can draw the deepest, to him we may look for the best and clearest supply. The pathology of insanity is still in its infancy; nothing is...