ABSTRACT
Legal systems arise from diverse local customs, and become formalized as a society’s development requires uniformity and predictability in the control of crime, the regulation of interpersonal relations, and the ordering of commercial transactions. The term civil law is confusing in Britain as part of British common law is called civil law to distinguish it from criminal law, and thus civil law in Britain has a different meaning. In England and Wales, legal insanity is a valid defence to any charge which can be tried in the Crown Court. The concept of being unfit to plead emerged from the rituals of the medieval court of law where a trial had to begin with the taking of the plea. Scotland, like some civil law countries, has used diminished responsibility since the nineteenth century. England embraced the concept for the same reason that it had embraced infanticide: growing abhorrence of the death penalty.
