Nineteenth-century courts inverted law so crimes imply possible insanity

Evidence

Instead of insanity eliminating the crime according to the original meaning of article 64, every crime and even every offence now carries within it, as a legitimate suspicion, but also as a right that may be claimed, the hypothesis of insanity, in any case of anomaly. And the sentence that condemns or acquits is not simply a judgement of guilt, a legal decision that lays down punishment; it bears within it an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization. Today the judge – magistrate or juror – certainly does more than ‘judge’. — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 59

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘assessment of normality’ in the sentence connects to Foucault’s later concept of normalization and disciplinary power developed in this same book. — connects to: A late-nineteenth-century crusade criminalized victimless vices like obscenity and gambling — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 818