Editing M'Naghten rules (section)

===Criticisms===
{{More citations needed section|date=October 2009}}
There have been four major criticisms of the law as it currently stands:
* '''Medical irrelevance''' – The legal definition of insanity has not advanced significantly since 1843; in 1953 evidence was given to the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment that doctors even then regarded the legal definition to be obsolete and misleading. This distinction has led to absurdities such as
** even though a legal definition suffices, mandatory hospitalisation can be ordered in cases of murder; if the defendant is not ''medically'' insane, there is little point in requiring medical treatment.
** Article 5 of the [[European Convention on Human Rights]], imported into English law by the [[Human Rights Act 1998]], provides that a person of unsound mind may be detained only where proper account of objective medical expertise has been taken. As yet, no cases have occurred in which this point has been argued.
* '''Ineffectiveness''' – The rules currently do not distinguish between defendants who represent a public danger and those who do not. Illnesses such as diabetes and epilepsy can be controlled by medication such that sufferers are less likely to have temporary aberrations of mental capacity, but the law does not recognise this.
* '''Sentencing for murder''' – A finding of insanity may well result in indefinite confinement in a hospital, whereas a conviction for murder may well result in a determinate sentence of between ten and 15 years; faced with this choice, it may be that defendants would prefer the certainty of the latter option. The defence of diminished responsibility in section 2(1) of the Homicide Act would reduce the conviction to voluntary manslaughter with more discretion on the part of the judge in regards to sentencing.
* '''Scope''' – A practical issue is whether the fact that an accused is labouring under a "mental disability" should be a necessary but not sufficient condition for negating responsibility i.e. whether the test should also require an incapacity to understand what is being done, to know that what one is doing is wrong, or to control an impulse to do something and so demonstrate a causal link between the disability and the potentially criminal acts and [[omission (criminal law)|omissions]]. For example, the Irish insanity defence comprises the M'Naghten Rules and a control test that asks whether the accused was debarred from refraining from committing the act because of a defect of reason due to mental illness (see ''Doyle v Wicklow County Council'' 1974) 55 IR 71. The [[Butler Committee]] recommended that proof of severe mental disorder should be sufficient to negate responsibility, in effect creating an [[irrebuttable presumption]] of irresponsibility arising from proof of a severe mental disorder. This has been criticised as it assumes a lack of criminal responsibility simply because there is evidence of some sort of mental dysfunction, rather than establishing a standard of criminal responsibility. According to this view, the law should be geared to [[culpability]] not mere psychiatric diagnosis.