Yega Muthu

This article examines the law of psychiatric illness in the light of Ronald Dworkin's and Stanley Fish's legal theory. The article proposes to examine the attitude of judges to judicial law making in England and Australia, the jurisprudential contributions to the debate and the need for and the justification of judge-made law in terms of rules, principles and policies. Although there is recent scientific research explaining that mental health causes actual trauma to brain cell structures, it seems unlikely that English courts will adopt a similar stance to recognize this new development in psychiatry. Dworkin is of the opinion that legal decisions must be justified with a legal theory such as 'application of the methods of literary interpretation to legal texts.' Dworkin explained his work by referring to policies, principles, rights, interpretations, adjudication, pragmatism, conventionalism and integrity. His perception of law is seen from an interpretive vantage p...

This paper will discuss the recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in legal cases based on the historical development of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM). Further the discussion will draw on the diagnostic relationship between the DSM and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). It is important to understand how the courts received evidence in relation to a person’s traumatic experience and to define the limits of liability for psychiatric illness cases. In tort law, the courts had been cautious to permit recovery to underserving litigants. Interpreting traumatic experiences from psychiatry to law, at times, do not succeed in a claim for compensation.  Belanger-Hardy opined ‘Tort Law has always viewed mental harm with caution, not to say scepticism’.  Historically, compensation for PTSD claims have always been awarded on ad hoc basis in tort law for fear of opening the floodgates.  In Saadati v Moorhead , Brown J acknowledged the ...