96
Kennedy, J., dissenting
tained or predicted in civil proceedings, is different in kind. Third, the State presents distinct rationales for these differing forms of commitment: In the civil context, the State acts in large part on the basis of its parens patriae power to protect and provide for an ill individual, while in the criminal context, the State acts to ensure the public safety. See Addington, 441 U. S., at 426; S. Brakel, J. Parry, & B. Weiner, The Mentally Disabled and the Law 24-25 (3d ed. 1985). A dismissive footnote, see ante, at 76-77, n. 4, cannot overcome these fundamental defects in the majority's opinion.
The majority's opinion is troubling at a further level, because it fails to recognize or account for profound differences between clinical insanity and state-law definitions of criminal insanity. It is by now well established that insanity as defined by the criminal law has no direct analog in medicine or science. "[T]he divergence between law and psychiatry is caused in part by the legal fiction represented by the words 'insanity' or 'insane,' which are a kind of lawyer's catchall and have no clinical meaning." J. Biggs, The Guilty Mind 117 (1955); see also 2 J. Bouvier, Law Dictionary 1590 (8th ed. 1914) ("The legal and the medical ideas of insanity are essentially different, and the difference is one of substance"). Consistent with the general rule that the definition of both crimes and defenses is a matter of state law, see Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S., at 210, the States are free to recognize and define the insanity defense as they see fit.
"Nothing could be less fruitful than for this Court to be impelled into defining some sort of insanity test in constitutional terms. . . . It is simply not yet the time to write into the Constitution formulas cast in terms whose meaning, let alone relevance, is not yet clear either to doctors or to lawyers." Powell v. Texas, 392 U. S. 514, 536-537 (1968) (plurality opinion).
See also id., at 545 (the Constitution does not impose on the States any particular test of criminal responsibility) (Black, J., concurring).
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