For the past centuries, a big part of the western jurisdiction was represented by the concept that a civilized society must not punish a person that is incapable of controlling his impulses - that is of course from the judicial point of view.
In 1794, a British law-court sustained the idea that a man is not responsible for an act if he doesn’t know what he is doing, "not more than the savage animals". Nevertheless, the modern standards of legal responsibility are based on M’ Naghten’s decision, no. 1843. This rule states that a defendant can be considered innocent due to his madness only if he was so severely affected in that time that he had not been aware of what he was doing , or if he knew what he was doing he was not aware that is was a wrong thing to do. This rule had been adopted in the USA and the distinction between good and wrong had been the foundation for the majority of the decisions concerning judicial irresponsibility for almost a century. Some states have added the doctrine of the "irresistible impulse". By this it was stated the fact that some individuals might answer correctly when they are asked whether an act is good or wrong from the moral point of view, but they also might have been incapable of controlling their behavior at the crime time.
Furthermore, in the year 1970, a series of states and federal courts adopted " The Rule Of The American Institute of Law". This rule contained a new judicial definition of madness, which was more permissive. The content of the definition can be summarized by the idea that not every incapacity can eliminate responsibility. If an individual knows what he was doing but he doesn’t understand it, he cannot appreciate whether it was right or wrong, in this case he cannot be considered guilty and responsible for the act.
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