Mens Rea Doctrine

in bourgeois criminal law, the concept that criminal responsibility should be determined not by the harm a person has caused, but by his intent. The mens rea doctrine is characterized by a denial of the generally recognized bourgeois democratic principles of legality. In fact, it justifies repression of an alleged criminal on the basis of his state of mind. The meaning of the mens rea doctrine appears particularly clearly in the evaluative theory of guilt, which treats guilt not as a psychological relationship to one’s wrongdoing but as the “reproachability of will formation.” This attitude allows for the arbitrary evaluation of the purpose of an action and frees the prosecution from the necessity of demonstrating in court that the accused is guilty of committing the given crime.

The mens rea doctrine has been most widely applied in the Federal Republic of Germany.