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Opinion of Scalia, J.
effect of increasing the punishment for all unlawful acts committed in that state, and thereby deters drunkenness or irresponsible behavior while drunk. The rule also serves as a specific deterrent, ensuring that those who prove incapable of controlling violent impulses while voluntarily intoxicated go to prison. And finally, the rule comports with and implements society's moral perception that one who has voluntarily impaired his own faculties should be responsible for the consequences. See, e. g., McDaniel v. State, 356 So. 2d 1151, 1160-1161 (Miss. 1978).4
There is, in modern times, even more justification for laws such as § 45-2-203 than there used to be. Some recent studies suggest that the connection between drunkenness and crime is as much cultural as pharmacological—that is, that drunks are violent not simply because alcohol makes them that way, but because they are behaving in accord with their learned belief that drunks are violent. See, e. g., Collins, Suggested Explanatory Frameworks to Clarify the Alcohol Use/Violence Relationship, 15 Contemp. Drug Prob. 107, 115 (1988); Critchlow, The Powers of John Barleycorn, 41 Am. Psychologist 751, 754-755 (July 1986). This not only adds additional support to the traditional view that an intoxicated criminal is not deserving of exoneration, but it suggests that juries—who possess the same learned belief as the intoxicated offender—will be too quick to accept the claim that the defendant was biologically incapable of forming the requisite
4 As appears from this analysis, we are in complete agreement with the concurrence that § 45-2-203 "embodies a legislative judgment regarding the circumstances under which individuals may be held criminally responsible for their actions," post, at 57. We also agree that the statute " 'extract[s] the entire subject of voluntary intoxication from the mens rea inquiry,' " post, at 58. We believe that this judgment may be implemented, and this effect achieved, with equal legitimacy by amending the substantive requirements for each crime, or by simply excluding intoxication evidence from the trial. We address this as an evidentiary statute simply because that is how the Supreme Court of Montana chose to analyze it.
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