INTRODUCTION Under common law, criminal responsibility usually distinguishes between intentional act and accident, andmost serious criminal offenses consist of both a voluntary act and a guilty mind.1 This treatment presumes that no defendant should be held criminally responsible without a finding of fault. Despite this long-standing conceptual commitment to fairness, criminal law continues to ...

Some believe that genetics threatens privacy and autonomy and will eviscerate the concept of human nature. Despite the astonishing research advances, however, none of these dire predictions and no radical transformation of the law have occurred. Advocates have tried to use genetic evidence to affect judgments of criminal responsibility. At present, however genetic research can provide little ai...

\ The records of our criminal jurisprudence are fertile in instances in which the most atrocious crimes are perpetrated 1^ persons who are absolved from responsibility on the ground of insanity. The mind is horrified at the tale of a mother cutting the throats of her helpless infants as they lie slumbering in their beds, or of another parent hurrying away her progeny in the darkness of the nigh...

Various authors debate the question of whether neuroscience is relevant to criminal responsibility. However, a plethora of different techniques and technologies, each with their own abilities and drawbacks, lurks beneath the label ‘‘neuroscience’’; and in criminal law responsibility is not a single, unitary and generic concept, but it is rather a syndrome of at least six different concepts. Con...