Intoxication and Criminal Responsibility
![handle is hein.journals/hlr57 and id is 1085 raw text is: 1944] INTOXICATION AND CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY 1045
INTOXICATION AND CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY
D RUNKENNESS is of exceptional theoretical importance for
the criminal law not only because it involves the basic postu-
lates of liability, but also because it constitutes an essential feature
of numerous fact-situations whose impact on the rules has had
curious and instructive effects. A rare opportunity is thus pre-
sented to study the incidence of the bare abstractions of legally
embodied ethical principles in the actualities of administration.
The ambiguities that inevitably abound in such general principles
can be reduced in any study of their meanings in the specific con-
texts of the issues raised in connection with the penal responsibility
of inebriates. The need for such an analysis is indicated by the
paucity of extant studies, in marked contrast to the literature on
the law of insanity which is practically boundless. The reason can-
not be the lesser social importance of the former, for although
mental disease is not an uncommon determinant of antisocial be-
havior, quantitatively it pales into insignificance by comparison
with the extent of intoxication.
One may well believe that traditional attitudes of hostility to-
ward drunkenness ' render rational and just determinations more
difficult than in insanity cases.2 The recent rise of a scientific lit-
erature on alcoholism makes re-examination of the traditional doc-
trines all the more important, indeed, imperative, for those who
sense the tragedy of unwitting harshness towards the weak, espe-
cially as it is revealed in this branch of the administration of the
penal law. For, although there has been much wise insight into
inebriety in the past, only within the last quarter of a century has
research been intensive and far-ranging. The veil has been drawn
sufficiently to stir profound and troublesome problems, questions
that challenge long-accepted standards and suggest that in this
broad field of human behavior where intoxication and serious harm
1 See People v. Townsend, 2i4 Mich. 267, 283 N. W. 177 (1921).
2 See East, Murder, From the Point of View of the Psychiatrist (1935) 3 MEDICO-
LEGAL & CRImiL. Rzv. 6i, 92.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hlr57&div=65&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Intoxication and Criminal Responsibility
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