Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-175_19m2.pdf
Page Number: 30

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

25 

Opinion of the Court 

that would serve to prevent this Court from becoming . . . 
the ultimate arbiter of the standards of criminal responsi-
bility, in diverse areas of the criminal law, throughout the
country.”  Powell, 392 U. S., at 533.  After all, nothing in the 
Amendment’s text or history exists to “confine” or guide our 
review.  Id., at 534.  Unaided by those sources, we would be
left  “to  write  into  the  Constitution”  our  own  “formulas,” 
many of which would likely prove unworkable in practice. 
Id., at 537.  Along the way, we would interfere with “essen-
tial considerations of federalism” that reserve to the States 
primary responsibility for drafting their own criminal laws. 
Id., at 535. 

In particular, Justice Marshall observed, extending Rob-
inson to cover involuntary acts  would effectively “impe[l]”
this Court “into defining” something akin to a new “insanity 
test in constitutional terms.”  392 U. S., at 536.  It would 
because an individual like the defendant in Powell does not 
dispute  that  he  has  committed  an  otherwise  criminal  act 
with the requisite mens rea, yet he seeks to be excused from
“moral accountability” because of his “ ‘condition.’ ”  Id., at 
535–536.  And “[n]othing,” Justice Marshall said, “could be 
less fruitful than for this Court” to try to resolve for the Na-
tion profound questions like that under a provision of the 
Constitution that does not speak to them.  Id., at 536.  In-
stead, Justice Marshall reasoned, such matters are gener-
ally left to be resolved through “productive” democratic “di-
alogue”  and  “experimentation,”  not  by  “freez[ing]”  any 
particular,  judicially preferred approach “into a rigid con-
stitutional mold.”  Id., at 537. 

We  recently  reemphasized  that  last  point  in  Kahler  v. 
Kansas  in  the  context  of  a  Due  Process  Clause  challenge. 
Drawing  on  Justice  Marshall’s  opinion  in  Powell,  we 
acknowledged  that  “a  state  rule  about  criminal  liability”
may violate due process if it departs from a rule “so rooted
in  the  traditions”  of  this  Nation  that  it  might  be  said  to