Ronald J. Rychlak

The insanity defense and the question of human agency

Abstract No court trial focuses our attention on the question of human agency more than one in which the insanity defense is being advanced. The Law presumes that human beings have free will. If they lacked this capacity there is no point in trying to decide whether it was intact during the commission of a crime. Unfortunately, many psychiatrists and psychologists who act as expert witnesses during such trials have been trained to believe that human beings are without free will. This paper seeks to correct this disparity between the assumptions of the legal profession and the social sciences. After reviewing the history of the insanity plea, elaborating the shifting grounds on which it has been and currently is being employed, two major theoretical detractions to free will are critically examined. It is argued that these detractions are not convincing, and that there is just as much theoretical and empirical justification for believing that people have free will as there is for denying this capacity. Expert witnesses of the future need have no qualms about taking free will seriously, even when this concerns unconscious behavior. When disagreements among expert witnesses arise on this question of human agency, they can be dealt with in the same reasoned and measured fashion as disagreements of any sort are resolved in the courtroom.

Pope and Devil: The Vatican's Archives and the Third Reich (review)

Shofar ♦ An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Crane’s study transposes discussions of Maritain’s thought into a new key. The philosopher’s conceptual imagery, constrained by the limited philosophical, theological, and other cultural tools at his disposal, frequently and understandably appears as antiquated relics of a bygone century. Small wonder that today’s readers find some of it ambiguous and inadequate. However, underlying anxieties over humanity’s abandonment to time and history’s irreducible absurdity weigh heavily as ever. Stephen Schloesser Boston College

Tort Law, Free Will, and Personal Responsibility

The tort law system is designed to assure that a harmed individual has recourse to the legal system. That serves the common good. Over the past few decades, however, tort law has changed so that it now encourages lawsuits designed to maximize recovery regardless of culpability. This comes at great expense to the community-affirming values of apology, acceptance of responsibility, and forgiveness. As legislators and judges consider reforms, the goal must be to return to a system which affirms the dignity of the person and affirms the community by placing blame only on those who are truly responsible.