arbiter
JournalsAccount

‘I Didn’t Know What I Was Doing!’ Not Knowing as the Grounding for Exculpation in Automatism

Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov

Current Legal Problems2025https://doi.org/10.1093/clp/cuaf012article
ABDC A
Weight
0.50

Abstract

A natural response to those who commit offences in highly disordered mental states is to consider that they did not know what they were doing at the time. This common response is compatible with the theoretical idea that in states of sane or insane automatism, self-awareness is lost, and our agential connection to our capacities breaks down. It is also consistent with a philosophically coherent grounding for exculpation in such cases, one based on the absence of non-observational knowledge, and on the defeat of agency that flows therefrom. The theoretical good sense in our natural response to affected agents (they did not know what they were doing!) reveals problems in the current law of automatism, and illuminates a more apt defence.

Open via your library →

Cite this paper

https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/clp/cuaf012

Or copy a formatted citation

@article{bebhinn2025,
  title        = {{‘I Didn’t Know What I Was Doing!’ Not Knowing as the Grounding for Exculpation in Automatism}},
  author       = {Bebhinn Donnelly-Lazarov},
  journal      = {Current Legal Problems},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1093/clp/cuaf012},
}

Paste directly into BibTeX, Zotero, or your reference manager.

Flag this paper

‘I Didn’t Know What I Was Doing!’ Not Knowing as the Grounding for Exculpation in Automatism

Flags are reviewed by the Arbiter methodology team within 5 business days.

Evidence weight

0.50

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20
M · momentum0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.