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Rethinking Legally Relevant Mental Disorder, Christopher Slobogin

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The law insists on maintaining mental disorder as a predicate for a wide array of legal provisions, in both the criminal justice system and the civil law. Among adults, only a person with a "mental disease or defect" can escape conviction for an intentional, unjustified crime on grounds of cognitive or volitional impairment.' Only people with "mental illness" or "mental disorder" may be subjected to indeterminate preventive commitment based on dangerousness. Under the laws of many states, only people with a mental disorder are prevented from making decisions about treatment, criminal charges, wills, contracts, and a host of other important …