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Negotiating Responsibility: Law, Murder, and States of Mind (Law and Society)
Negotiating Responsibility Law Murder and States of Mind - Law and Society Author:Kimberley White "Negotiating Responsibility" interrogates the socio-cultural, medical, and legal processes that shaped the meaning of criminal responsibility in early to mid 20th-century capital murder cases. This book complicates more generalized arguments about the historical relationship between law and psychiatry, the insanity defence, and the role of psych... more »iatric expertise in criminal law cases.Using capital murder case files as the primary site of analysis, White examines how knowledge about criminal responsibility was produced, organized, and legitimized in and through institutional structures, politics of identity (including race, character, citizenship, and gender), and overlapping narratives of mind-state. In particular, she points to the more subtle, but deeply influential, ways in which common-sense thinking about crime, punishment, criminality, and human nature shaped the boundaries of expert knowledge at every stage of the judicial process."Negotiating Responsibility" fills a void in Western socio-legal history scholarship and provides a critical point of reference from which to evaluate current criminal law practices and law reform initiatives in Canada. It will be of interest to academics and students in the critical fields of law and society, history, criminology, and cultural studies.« less