Making Sense of "Insanity": Law, Psychiatry, and the Royal Commission on the Law of Insanity as a Defence in Criminal Cases.

This article examines the Royal Commission on the Law of Insanity as a Defence in Criminal Cases (RCLI), established by the Canadian government in 1954 to review and potentially reform the country's insanity laws. Despite advances in psychiatry and psychology and the growing influence of these fields in postwar Canada, the commission found that legal and psychiatric frameworks were largely incompatible, leading it to uphold the existing legal standards based on the M'Naghten Rules without recommending major changes. The RCLI highlighted the complex relationship between criminal insanity and capital punishment, noting that the royal prerogative of mercy often mitigated harsh sentences in capital cases, which reduced pressure for reform. Ultimately, the commission's report, released in 1957, had little immediate impact and exemplified the legal stagnation in Canadian insanity law that persisted until significant reforms in the early 1990s.