Automatism is a notoriously difficult subject for law students, lawyers and judges. This book explores the science and medicine of sleep disorders and examines how the criminal process deals with such disorders when presented as a defence. It systematically examines the legal doctrines involved, and their implications for the use of the evidence key to establishing automatism, while also exploring the medical conditions that can cause automatism (particularly epilepsy, sleepwalking and diabetes). This book is a valuable resource for law students, lawyers, judges and expert witnesses.

By defining appropriate boundaries for the defence of insanity and the doctrine of automatism, this book presents a consistent and principled approach to the reform of mental state defences. In particular, by undertaking an interdisciplinary analysis of the various factors that inform these defences the book concludes with several practical and robust reform proposals There are three objectives that underpin the suggested reform proposals. First, to ensure that an accused will be able to raise a defence of insanity for involuntary conduct arising from mental disorder even where he or she is aware of the nature and quality of such conduct. Second, to provide principled means by which to establish the criminal responsibility of an accused for conduct performed in a state of drug-induced psychosis. Third, to ensure that criminal conduct arising from a state of ’impaired consciousness’ does not automatically result in the outright acquittal of an accused. In articulating the competing demands that must be balanced in order to secure a principled approach to the reform of mental state defences the book will be of relevance to all common law countries.

This accessible text enables criminology and criminal justice students to understand and critically evaluate criminal law in the context of criminal justice and wider social issues. The book explains criminal law comprehensively, covering both general principles and specific types of criminal offences. It examines criminal law in its social context, as well as considering how it is used by the criminal justice processes and agencies which enforce it in practice. Covering all the different theoretical approaches that the student of criminology and criminal justice will need to understand, the book provides learning tools such as: -chapter objectives - making the structure of the book easy to follow for students -questions for discussion and student exercises - helping students to think critically about the ideas and concepts in each chapter, and to undertake further independent and reflective study -′definition boxes′ explaining key concepts - helping students who are not familiar with specialist criminal law terminology to understand what the key basic concepts in criminal law really mean in practice -a companion Website which incorporates a range of resources for lecturers and students.

This is a comprehensive reference text that examines the current state of Legal Medicine, which encompasses Forensic Medicine, in the 21st century. It examines the scope of both legal and forensic medicine, its application and study and has adopted a wide ranging approach including multinational authorship. It reviews the differences between and similarities of forensic and legal medicine, the need for academic qualification, the applications to many and varied fields including international aid, military medicine, health law and the application of medical knowledge to both criminal law and tort/civil law, sports medicine and law, gender and age related factors from obstetrics through to geriatrics and palliative care as well as cultural differences exploring the Christian/Judeo approach compared with that within Islamic cultures, Buddhism and Hinduism. The book looks at practical applications of legal medicine within various international and intercultural frameworks. This is a seminal authoritative text in legal and forensic medicine. It has a multi-author and multinational approach which crosses national boundaries. There is a great interest in the development of health law and legal medicine institutes around the world and this text comes in on the ground floor of this burgeoning discipline and provides the foundation text for many courses, both undergraduate and postgraduate. It defines the place of legal medicine as a specialized discipline.​

Lawrie Reznek addresses these questions and more in his controversial investigation of the insanity defense in Evil or Ill? Drawing from countless intriguing case examples, he aims to understand the concept of an excuse, and explains why the law excuses certain actions and not others. In his easily accessible and elegant style, he explains that in law, there exists two excuses derived from Aristotle: the excuses of ignorance and compulsion. Reznek, however proposes a third excuse - the excuse of character change. In introducing this third excuse, Reznek raises a controversial possibility - the abolition of the insanity defence.