Diminished Responsibility and Loss of Control

This chapter identifies the law and jurisprudence in international criminal law, that relates to diminished responsibility and loss of control and to determine how these concepts have been understood in international criminal law, what their legal implications are and what factors and considerations govern their application. The unifying thread running through all this domestic legislation is mental condition or provocation as the basis for a finding of a lesser crime of homicide. Diminished responsibility and loss of control in English law stand in stark contrast with the corresponding notions in international criminal law. In these cases the factors that provide the basis for diminished responsibility and loss of control constitute grounds for mitigation. The future development of mental condition and loss of self-control as mitigation in international criminal law can be expected to be linked with this rarely found inclination to treat exposure to the circumstances arising in armed conflict as mitigatory.