Given juveniles' right to participate in their own defense, the doctrine of competency to stand trial or to participate rationally in one's defense must apply to juveniles. For a juvenile hearing to be fair, juveniles must understand the proceedings and be capable of using them to their advantage. Also, given the potentially punitive outcomes of delinquency dispositions in the juvenile court, defendants must be able to use defenses pertinent to the issue of criminal responsibility or mens rea. To suggest that the insanity defense is superfluous because the juvenile who suffers from a mental disorder will receive treatment whether or not he/she is found insane ignores other potentially undesirable effects of a delinquency adjudication. The place of the infancy defense (absence of criminal responsibility because of immaturity) in the juvenile court is debatable, given the extent that capacity is subsumed under the concept of mens rea, i.e., the presence of criminal intent in the behavior at issue. 30 references.