How to Understand the Concept of Mental Disorder in Criminal Law? An Explicationist Perspective

The notion of mental disorder plays an important role in criminal law, particularly in relation to competency to stand trial, culpability, and entitlement to special treatment. However, how this concept should be understood in this context is rarely discussed explicitly in recent literature. To address this issue, the present paper explores which concept of mental disorder would be most suitable for criminal law. Using the explicationist methodology, the paper outlines several desiderata for an adequate concept. Among these, it identifies a crucial desideratum labeled the “non-redundancy criterion”. This criterion holds that, to play a non-redundant role in criminal law, the concept of mental disorder must be defined independently of the capacities that underlie criminal responsibility. The paper evaluates several traditional accounts of mental disorder from the philosophy of psychiatry—including objectivist, value-laden, and hybrid views—and assesses which best satisfies this criterion while also fulfilling the broader roles that mental disorders serve in criminal law. The paper concludes that the objectivist understanding of mental disorders provides the most suitable explication for the purposes of criminal law.