In Legal insanity: Explorations in psychiatry, law, and ethics, written by Gerben Meynen, the curious reader is showered with a detailed and engaging narrative of the concept of legal insanity, which includes key theoretical perspectives (legal, ethical, and psychological), as well as accepted definitions and applications within a selected universe of countries. The author’s narrative gives the reader the illusion of being in the driver’s seat by cleverly anticipating likely queries, doubts, and requests for additional information. The author’s respect for scholarly analysis emerges in his intent to offer the reader a keen, comprehensive, and integrated overview of critical issues, historical and scientific data, detailed observations and informative commentaries. He succeeds in highlighting the conundrums that are hidden in concise and ostensibly plain definitions and that surface when such definitions are applied to the complexities of human nature.

In my opinion, the chapter that is likely to be of most interest to a wide readership is the one where the concepts of legal insanity and incompetence, including their applications, are compared. It is also the chapter where an attempt is made to introduce clarity to the concept of legal insanity by suggesting that its content be replaced by the concept of incompetency, which the author defines as lack of four capacities at the time a crime is committed. These capacities include the culprit’s ability to decide/select actions, to understand relevant information, to appreciate the situation faced and its consequences, and to reason about available behavioral options. According to the author, although the latter capacity is less critical than the others, the proposed conceptual replacement has the undeniable advantage of recognizing that the matter pertinent to legal practice is the effect of a mental disorder on the culprit’s capacities, rather than the disorder itself. This replacement not only excludes any explicit reference to mental illness, but also focuses on specific inabilities possessed by a person at the time of the commission of a crime. As such, it may afford less contentious applications as well as have the added advantage of bypassing the criticism that clinicians’ diagnoses are more subjective than objective markers of mental illness.   

One modest criticism that may transpire from the author’s desire for an interdisciplinary and comprehensive approach to the controversial issue of legal insanity is his focus on the legal systems of some selected countries at the expense of others. In this regard, the notion of legal insanity in Sharia law, for instance, may need to be discussed if the author’s narrative is to be fair and inclusive. Of course, reasonable to ask is whether fine-grained comparisons of the concept of legal insanity in diverse legal systems, which are elegantly exemplified by Meynen’s narrative, can benefit from an analysis of Sharia law. The reason for inclusion may be not only that the legal systems of several countries around the world are shaped by Sharia law (prevalence criterion), but also that some of its more or less distinctive features are unknown or misunderstood, thereby demanding scholarly exploration and debate. Consider, for instance, the fact that under Sharia law, offenders, even if not judged to be culpable due to insanity, may still be considered liable for the damages caused by their actions. Alternatively, consider, the extent to which the criterion of legal insanity in Sharia law relates to the concept of mental capacity (usually epitomized by a person of age, baligh, who is judged to be sane, aqil, and fully responsible, mukallaf) as well as differs from other criteria that may support a culprit’s exoneration from liability (e.g., young age, compulsion, intoxication, ignorance of the law, accidental mistake, and self-defense).

Another modest criticism stems from the chapter devoted to the contributions that neuroscience can make to legal practice. The chapter mostly focuses on future potential contributions of the field and on a wealth of epigrammatic remarks articulated by well-known legal scholars and scientists regarding the current and future utility of brain-related evidence. The fabric of the chapter is a patchwork of commentaries and thus it translates in much less fluent reading than that of other chapters. Of course, the author’s desire to ensure an objective analysis of the role that neuroscience has and can have in legal practice is commendable. It is particularly commendable if one wants to know the extent to which current evidence of brain structure and functioning can aid decisions about the insanity of culprits. Meynen is very cautious, and rightly so, about evaluating the utility of neuro-scientific evidence in legal decisions. For instance, he mentions that neuro-scientific evidence is, in essence, a measure of the central tendency of group data, whereas legal concepts, criteria, and practice are concerned, at any given point in time, with a particular individual whose case is under consideration. Furthermore, he notes that the relationship between evidence of brain anomalies, either at the structural or at the functional level, and behavior is often correlational, thereby rarely justifying reliable and valid causal inferences. It is undeniable that neuro-scientific evidence collected from a lab where subjects willingly follow researchers’ instructions is difficult to apply to specific legal cases. Furthermore, it represents merely one of the items, among a constellation of facts that need to be interpreted to determine legal insanity. Yet, Meynen’s narrative, by devoting broad consideration to anticipated developments in the field of neuroscience, and thus to the potential future utility of functional and structural brain findings, misses the opportunity to talk more at length about the present. For example, the text of this chapter may benefit from the addition of a wealth of concrete examples of the shortcomings and misuses of the available evidence. It may even benefit from an in-depth coverage of the challenges that arise when the evidence collected by scientists is to be communicated to non-scientists, including lawyers, judges, and jurors, whose main interest is not broad acquisition of knowledge, but knowledge that can be used to determine the accountability of a specific individual.

Notwithstanding the complexity of the issues addressed by Legal insanity: Explorations in psychiatry, law, and ethics, its content is so informative and engaging that it can be beneficial to instruction in undergraduate and graduate classes encompassing a variety of subjects (e.g., forensic psychology, ethics, and legal doctrine). It can also be the ideal read for legal scholars, philosophers of ethics, and scientists who are interested in the conundrums posed by the criteria that determine legal insanity in diverse legal systems. The text has a remarkable multitude of footnotes where additional information and sources can be found. Thus, it offers to even the most inquisitive minds the opportunity to expand their horizons and engage in more in-depth explorations of the challenging, opaque, and unquestionably controversial concept of legal insanity. The author’s noteworthy effort to explore such a significant concept, which leads him to consider the challenges of impartial application, is likely to become apparent, even to novice readers, after the first few pages of his work are absorbed. Yet, the information that can be gathered from the author’s painstakingly clever reports and critical analyses, all combined in one text, is certainly to be invaluable to all who read it in its entirety.

© 2017 Maura Pilotti

Maura Pilotti, PhD