H.H.A. Cooper MAIS 5300 - 501 CRN13024 Law and Psychiatry Law, in developed societies, focuses ever more intensely, and minutely, upon the mental elements governing human behavior. The law concerns itself not only with what human beings do or fail to do, but also with why their actions are so conditioned. Homicide, for example, is the killing by a human being of another human being.
Some homicides are more blameworthy than others, carrying a higher degree of culpability.
Others are wholly excused, as in the case of state ordered executions or homicides committed in the course of permissible self-defense. Yet others are tempered by considerations, which reduce the opprobrium and punishment attaching to their commission. In all these cases, it is the quality of the accompanying mental element that provides the distinguishing conditions for the law. Psychiatry is an area of specialization of medical science concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness. In the forensic sphere, law and psychiatry work together to achieve the social objectives outlined above.