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Should a person who cannot appreciate the moral significance of legal norms qualify as a blameworthy actor simply because he has the capacity to comply with them for non-moral reasons? Such a person may lack any empathy for other human beings and view moral norms as arbitrary restraints on his self-interested behavior: does he nevertheless deserve moral blame when he makes an instrumentally “rational choice” to breach a norm governing his action? Should our answers to these questions depend on whether we believe that the actor is morally responsible for lacking these moral emotions and understandings? In short, must we concern ourselves with those aspects of the agent's character – his goals, desires, values, emotions, and perceptions of what courses of action are available to him – that motivate his rational choices? Or are questions about what motivates the actor to exercise his capacity for rational choice irrelevant to our judgments concerning his moral culpability for violating some governing norm?One way of thinking about such questions is to ask what attributes a person must possess to qualify as an appropriate addressee of moral norms and a suitable object of moral blame. Must a moral agent have the capacity to respond to moral norms as a reason for his choices? Must he also be able to control those aspects of his character that impair his capacity to make moral choices?Most legal theorists insist that moral agents do not need such capacities to be fairly blamed for violating the minimal moral restraints that the criminal law imposes on their self-interested acts.

In addition to provoking public and scholarly debate, the recent acquittal of John W. Hinckley, Jr. has prompted the Ninety-Seventh Congress to consider various bills that would abolish or reform the federal insanity defense. The following is an unedited version of Professor Arenella’s testimony concerning these bills given before the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Criminal Justice on August 12, 1982.

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I wish to thank my research assistants, Barbara Dupre and Pat McAndrew, for their considerable assistance. Special thanks must also go to my colleagues, Professors George Wallace, Jay Feinman, and _Rand Rosenblatt, and to Professor Peter Goldberger, for their invaluable critiques of earlier drafts of this Article.