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90 B.U. L. Rev. 621 (2010)
Mental Disorders and the System of Judgmental Responsibility

handle is hein.journals/bulr90 and id is 627 raw text is: MENTAL DISORDERS AND THE SYSTEM OF JUDGMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY ANITA L. ALLEN* I. Any long period of insanity or deep compulsive obsession ruins a life.I Justice for Hedgehogs is a big book about one big thing: the truth of living well and being good.2 Dworkin maintains that people each have a general, foundational responsibility to live well, to make something of their lives, and that living well is a matter of making appropriate decisions over one's life.3 Acting responsibly means acting in a principled way. It is a virtue.4 People who might otherwise be responsible are compromised by self-interest, by being pulled in two directions at once (moral schizophrenia), and by failing to apply applicable principles across all categories of reflection (moral compartmentalization).5 People who might otherwise act responsibly are also compromised by the conditions popularly and imprecisely referred to as mental disease, mental illness, mental disorder, being crazy, and insanity. The percentage of people in the United States assigned one of these labels is strikingly large.6 It is surprising that moral philosophers do not have more to say - descriptively, analytically, and normatively - about the moral lives and responsibilities of persons affected by mental conditions. For his part, Dworkin states that serious, persistent mental disorder can undercut responsibility and ruins a life.7 Like most philosophers of moral and ethical responsibility, Dworkin concentrates on normal adult men and women. However, in Dworkin's * Deputy Dean and Henry R. Silverman Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy, University of Pennsylvania Law School. I RONALD DWORKIN, JUSTICE FOR HEDGEHOGS (forthcoming 2010) (Apr. 17, 2009 manuscript at 143, on file with the Boston University Law Review). 2 Id. (manuscript at 138). 3 Id. 4 Id. (manuscript at 67). s Id. (manuscript at 68). 6 See Press Release, National Institute of Mental Health, Mental Illness Exacts Heavy Toll, Beginning in Youth (June 6, 2005), available at http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science- news/2005/mental-illness-exacts-heavy-toll-beginning-in-youth.shtml. DWORKIN, supra note 1 (manuscript at 143). 621

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