Mental Illness and the Law

This page includes materials which deal with the role of mental health professionals in the criminal justice system.  This includes topics such as the definition of criminal responsibility (and insanity), expert testimony among mental health professionals, and civil liability issues.

To aggregate similar materials on this subject together do a subject search using this subject heading:

Mental health laws -- United States

If you are looking for journal articles, remember to use both the full-text database on Westlaw and also a bibliographic database such as LegalTrac or Index to Legal Periodicals.

Goldstein, Joseph & Katz, Jay.  Dangerousness and mental illness : some observations on the decision to release persons acquitted by reason of insanity.  70 Yale L.J. 225 (1960-1961).

Hall, Jerome.  Psychiatry and criminal responsibility.  65 Yale L.J. 761 (1955-1956).

Waelder, Robert.  Psychiatry and the problem of criminal responsibility.  101 U. Pa. L. Rev. 378 (1952-1953).

Szasz, Thomas S.  Psychiatry, ethics, and the criminal law.  58 Colum. L. Rev. 183 (1958).

Ward, Barbara A.  Competency for execution : problems in law and psychiatry.  14 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 35 (1986-1987).

Roche, Phillip Q.  Criminality and mental illness -- two faces of the same coin.  22 U. Chi. L. Rev. 320 (1954-1955).

Berkman, Ellen Fels.  Mental illness as aggravating circumstance in capital sentencing.  89 Colum. L. Rev. 291 (1989).