Loss of Control and Diminished Responsibility

This book provides a leading point of reference in the field of partial defences to murder and with respect to the mental condition defences of loss of control and diminished responsibility in general. The work includes contributions from leading specialists from different jurisdictions. Divided into two parts, the first provides an analysis from the perspective of the UK, looking at particular concerns such as domestic violence, revenge and mixed motive killings, mistaken beliefs. The second part presents a comparative and international view to provide a wider background of how alternative systems treat issues of human frailty short of full insanity (loss of control, diminished responsibility) in the context of the criminal law.

Michael Bohlander is Professor of Law, Durham University. Before joining Durham Law School in 2004, he had been a member of the German judiciary since 1991. From 1999 until 2001 he served as the Senior Legal Officer of a Trial Chamber at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague. In 2010, Professor Bohlander was appointed to the Visiting Chair in Criminal Law at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. He has published 10 books and over 110 articles, essays, chapters etc. His publications have been cited widely by and before courts in several domestic and international jurisdictions. Alan Reed graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge University with a First Class Honours Degree in Law, and was awarded the Herbert Smith Prize for Conflict of Laws and the Dr Lancey Prize. Cambridge University awarded him a full Holland Scholarship to facilitate study in the United States and he obtained an LLM Master's of Law (Comparative Law) at the University of Virginia. After completion of the Law Society Finals Examinations he spent three years in practice in London at Addlshaw Goddard, and also acted as a Tutor in Criminal Law at Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent seven years as a lecturer in law at Leeds University, and from September 2001 has been engaged as Professor of Criminal and Private International Law at Sunderland University. Alan has published over 200 monographs, textbooks and articles in the substantive arena in leading journals in England, Australia, New York, Florida and Los Angeles. For the last 10 years he has been editor of the Journal of Criminal Law.