RESPONSIBILITY
responsibility,n.1.LIABILITY(1).2.Criminal law. A person’s mental fitness to answer in court
for his or her actions. See COMPETENCY. [Cases: Mental Health 432. C.J.S. Criminal Law §§
549–554.] 3.Criminal law. Guilt. — Also termed (in senses 2 & 3) criminal responsibility. —
responsible,adj.
“[As for] the ambiguities of the word ‘responsibility,’ … it is, I think, still important to
distinguish two of the very different things this difficult word may mean. To say that someone is
legally responsible for something often means only that under legal rules he is liable to be made
either to suffer or to pay compensation in certain eventualities. The expression ‘he’ll pay for it’
covers both these things. In this the primary sense of the word, though a man is normally only
responsible for his own actions or the harm he has done, he may be also responsible for the actions
of other persons if legal rules so provide. Indeed in this sense a baby in arms or a totally insane
person might be legally responsible — again, if the rules so provide; for the word simply means
liable to be made to account or pay and we might call this sense of the word ‘legal accountability’.
But the new idea — the programme of eliminating responsibility — is not, as some have feared,
meant to eliminate legal accountability: persons who break the law are not just to be left free.
What is to be eliminated are enquiries as to whether a person who has done what the law forbids
was responsible at the time he did it and responsible in this sense does not refer to the legal status
of accountability. It means the capacity, so far as this is a matter of a man’s mind or will, which
normal people have to control their actions and conform to law. In this sense of responsibility a
man’s responsibility can be said to be ‘impaired’.” H.L.A. Hart, “Changing Conceptions of
Responsibility,” in Punishment and Responsibility 186, 196–97 (1968).
“Responsibility means answerability or accountability. It is used in the criminal law in the
sense of ‘criminal responsibility’ and hence means answerability to the criminal law.” Rollin M.
Perkins & Ronald N. Boyce, Criminal Law and Procedure: Cases and Materials 399 (5th ed.
1977). [Blacks Law 8th]