The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
How can we know what someone else is thinking or feeling, let alone prove it in court? In his 1863 book, A General View of the Criminal Law of England, James Fitzjames Stephen, among the most celebrated legal thinkers of his generation, was of the opinion that the assessment of a person’s mental state was an inference made with “little consciousness.” In a criminal case, jurors, doctors, and lawyers could watch defendants—scrutinizing clothing, mannerisms, tone of voice—but the best they could hope for were clues. . . . Rounding these clues up to a judgment about a defendant’s guilt, or a defendant’s life, was an act of empathy and imagination. . . . The closer the resemblance between defendants and their judges, the easier it was to overlook the gap that inference filled. Conversely, when a defendant struck officials as unlike themselves, whether by dint of disease, gender, confession, or race, the precariousness of judgments about mental state was exposed.
In the nineteenth century, physicians who specialized in the study of madness and the care of the insane held themselves out as experts in the new field of mental science. Often called alienists or mad doctors, they were the predecessors of modern psychiatrists, neurologists, and psychologists. . . . The opinions of family and neighbors had once been sufficient to sift the sane from the insane, but a growing belief that insanity was a subtle condition that required expert, medical diagnosis pushed physicians into the witness box. . . . Lawyers for both prosecution and defense began to recruit alienists to assess defendants’ sanity and to testify to it in court.
Irresponsibility and insanity were not identical, however. Criminal responsibility was a legal concept and not, fundamentally, a medical one. Stephen explained: “The question ‘What are the mental elements of responsibility?’ is, and must be, a legal question. It cannot be anything else, for the meaning of responsibility is liability to punishment.” . . . Nonetheless, medical and legal accounts of what it meant to be mentally sound became entangled and mutually referential throughout the nineteenth century. Lawyers relied on medical knowledge to inform their opinions and arguments about the sanity of their clients. Doctors commented on the legal responsibility of their patients. Ultimately, the fields of criminal law and mental science were both invested in constructing an image of the broken and damaged psyche that could be contrasted with the whole and healthy one. This shared interest, and the shared space of the criminal courtroom, made it nearly impossible to consider responsibility without medicine, or insanity without law. . . .
Physicians and lawyers shared more than just concern for the mind. Class, race, and gender bound these middle-class, white, professional men together, as did family ties, patriotism, Protestantism, business ventures, the alumni networks of elite schools and universities, and structures of political patronage. But for all their affinities, men of medicine and law were divided by contests over the borders of criminal responsibility, as much within each profession as between them. Alienists steadily pushed the boundaries of their field, developing increasingly complex and capacious definitions of insanity. Eccentricity and aggression came to be classified as symptoms of mental disease, at least by some.
Physicians who specialised in the study of madness and the care of the insane in the nineteenth century.
The second paragraph defines the term directly.
It says physicians who specialised in the study of madness and the care of the insane were often called alienists or mad doctors, and were the forerunners of psychiatrists, neurologists and psychologists.
Alienists were physicians only, not lawyers, and the word has nothing to do with immigrants or extraterrestrials; the passage also never says their field became unrecognisable.
Hence, Physicians who specialised in the study of madness and the care of the insane in the nineteenth century.
Judgement, Insanity, Punishment, Responsibility.
The passage is about how courts judged a defendant's mental state, how insanity came to need medical experts, and how criminal responsibility was defined as liability to punishment.
Its core ideas are therefore judgement of the mind, insanity, punishment and responsibility.
The other sets mix in minor details such as patronage, business or patriotism, which appear only in a list of social ties and are not the passage's concern.
Hence, Judgement, Insanity, Punishment, Responsibility.
Referring to the practice of ‘confession’ in some faiths, here it is a metaphor for the religion of the defendant.
In the sentence, "confession" sits in a list with disease, gender and race, all of which are ways a defendant could differ from the officials judging him or her.
In this setting the word refers to a person's religious faith or denomination, a sense linked to the practice of confession in some faiths.
The last paragraph supports this, since it lists Protestantism among the ties binding the judges, so a defendant of another faith would seem unlike them.
The word does not mean admitting to a crime, and "by dint of" means "because of", not "did not".
Hence, Referring to the practice of ‘confession’ in some faiths, here it is a metaphor for the religion of the defendant.
The borders of criminal responsibility.
The last paragraph lists what bound physicians and lawyers together: class, race, gender, family ties, patriotism, religion, business and school networks.
It then says that, for all these affinities, they were divided by contests over the borders of criminal responsibility, within each profession and between them.
So what linked these men as a group, as the passage frames it, was their shared engagement, and dispute, over where criminal responsibility begins and ends.
Eccentricity and aggression were symptoms some alienists labelled, empathy and imagination describe how jurors judged defendants, and family opinion was an older test of sanity, so none of these links the men.
Hence, The borders of criminal responsibility.
Similar Questions
Zombie cells may contribute to age-related chronic inflammation: this finding could help scientists understand more about the aging process and why the immune system becomes less effective as we get older. Zombie or “senescent” cells are damaged cells that can no longer divide and grow like normal cells. Scientists think that these cells can contribute to chronic health problems when they accumulate in the body. In younger people, the immune system is more effective at clearing senescent cells from the body through a process called apoptosis, but as we age this process becomes less efficient. As a result, there is an accumulation of senescent cells in different organs in the body, either through increased production or reduced clearance by the immune system. The zombie cells continue to use energy though they do not divide, and often secrete chemicals that cause inflammation, which if persistent for longer periods of time can damage healthy cells leading to chronic diseases.
Identify the odd sentence out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
According to the incentive or moral hazard argument, which one of the designs below is most consistent with the claim that some inequality can raise growth?
Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?
The primary function of the three-part case for a positive income inequality–economic growth link in the first half of the passage is to show that:
The passage refers to "democratization". Choose the one option below that comes closest to the opposite of this process.
Important Questions from Non Grammar
- In formulating Principle VI (a), the ILC clarified the term "waging of a war of aggression" because:
- The author attributes the growing public frustration with the UN primarily to which pair of continuous failures?
- A primary point of divergence between the US Conservative position and the Secretary-General's Conservative position on security matters, according to the summary is:
- According to the critique's conclusion, the immediate, insurmountable barrier preventing the implementation of any reform, major or minor, is:
- The Secretary-General's 'Agenda for Peace' proposed a specific military capability intended to address the gap between traditional peace-keeping and full military action. This proposed unit was explicitly characterized by the summary as being:
