Linda Gröning (University of Bergen - Faculty of Law), Unn K. Haukvik (Adult Psychiatry Unit, University of Oslo), Stephen Morse (University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School), & Susanna Radovic (Department of Philosophy, Linguistics, Theory of Science, University of Gothenburg) have posted Remodelling criminal insanity: Exploring philosophical, legal, and medical premises of the medical model used in Norwegian law (International Journal of Law and Psychiatry (Forthcoming)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This paper clarifies the conceptual space of discussion of legal insanity by considering the virtues of the ‘medical model’ model that has been used in Norway for almost a century. The medical model identifies insanity exclusively with mental disorder, and especially with psychosis, without any requirement that the disorder causally influenced the commission of the crime. We explore the medical model from a transdisciplinary perspective and show how it can be utilised to systematise and reconsider the central philosophical, legal and medical premises involved in the insanity debate. A key concern is how recent transdiagnostic and dimensional approaches to psychosis can illuminate the law's understanding of insanity and its relation to mental disorder. The authors eventually raise the question whether the medical model can be reconstructed into a unified insanity model that is valid across the related disciplinary perspectives, and that moves beyond current insanity models.
Highly recommended.
