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33 Ind. L.J. 212 (1957-1958)
Mental Disease and Criminal Responsibility--M'Naghten versus Durham and the American Law Institute's Tentative Draft

handle is hein.journals/indana33 and id is 222 raw text is: MENTAL DISEASE AND CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY- M'NAGHTEN VERSUS DURHAM AND THE AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE'S TENTATIVE DRAFT JEROME HALLt Editorial Note On April 5, 1957 a Conference Panel discussion on Mental Disease and Criminal Responsibility was held at the Harvard Law School during the annual meeting of the First and Second Circuits of the American Law Student Association. The participants were Professor Abram J. Chayes, Harvard, who had assisted in the preparation of the Durham opinion and who presented that view; Professor Herbert Wechsler, Columbia, Chief Reporter of the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code, who presented that view; and Professor Jerome Hall, Indiana, who presented the M'Naghten view. Professor Louis L. Jaffe, Harvard, presided. Unfortunately, Professor Chayes' and Professor Wechsler's discussions were not available for publication. The following is Profes- sor Hall's discussion, prepared from a tape recording at the Conference. Excerpts from the Durham decision and the American Law Institute's Tentative Draft are included after Professor Hall's introductory remarks and he has added some footnotes to clarify the context of his discussion. I. Professor Hall's Opening Statement The problem of criminal responsibility makes sense only if human responsibility makes sense. If there is any point in talking about the re- sponsibility of a normal person, then there is point in the issues we dis- cuss in criminal law. Thus our problem is an aspect of the central ques- tion in any human being's life, his stand zis a vis the world, especially whether moral obligation, freedom and responsibility have meaning for him. For many reasons and because of major changes in certain cultural currents which I cannot elaborate here, we face a mounting wave of ir- rationalism which threatens to put out the spark of human understand- ing or so depreciate it that the age-old conception, at least in the western world, of man as a rational free being would disappear, and new ideas of human nature and new implications for criminal law and much else would prevail. t Distinguished Service Professor of Law, Indiana University.

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