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Full-Text Articles in Law
All His Sexless Patients: Persons With Mental Disabilities And The Competence To Have Sex, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch
All His Sexless Patients: Persons With Mental Disabilities And The Competence To Have Sex, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch
Articles & Chapters
With the growth in the field of mental disability law over the past 50 years, very few topics involving persons with mental illness remain taboo or off limits to scholars and judges who face these issues daily. However, discussions of the question of whether persons with mental disabilities have a right to voluntary sexual interaction often touches a raw nerve in conversations about mental disability law, even with those who are practicing in the field, and the discomfort people feel in examining this topic is exacerbated when discussing individuals who are institutionalized.
Although this often appears to be a difficult …
The Judge, He Cast His Robe Aside: Mental Health Courts, Dignity And Due Process, Michael L. Perlin
The Judge, He Cast His Robe Aside: Mental Health Courts, Dignity And Due Process, Michael L. Perlin
Articles & Chapters
One of the most important developments in the past two decades in the way that criminal defendants with mental disabilities are treated in the criminal process has been the creation and the expansion of mental health courts, one kind of “problem-solving court.” There are now over 300 such courts in operation in States, some dealing solely with misdemeanors, some solely with non-violent offenders, and some with no such restrictions. There is a wide range of dispositional alternatives available to judges in these cases, and an even wider range of judicial attitudes. And the entire concept of “mental health courts” is …
John Brown Went Off To War: Considering Veterans’ Courts As Problem-Solving Courts, Michael L. Perlin
John Brown Went Off To War: Considering Veterans’ Courts As Problem-Solving Courts, Michael L. Perlin
Articles & Chapters
In this paper, I seek to contextualize veterans courts in light of the therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) movement, the turn to problem-solving courts of all sorts (especially focusing on mental health courts), and the societal ambivalence that we have shown to veterans in the four decades since the Vietnam war.
I argue that TJ’s focuses on how law actually impacts people’s lives, on the law’s influence on emotional life and psychological well-being and on the need for law to value psychological health and avoid the imposition of anti-therapeutic consequences whenever possible can serve as a template for a veterans courts model …
Unasked (And Unanswered) Questions About The Role Of Neuroimaging In The Criminal Trial Process, Michael L. Perlin, Valerie Mcclain
Unasked (And Unanswered) Questions About The Role Of Neuroimaging In The Criminal Trial Process, Michael L. Perlin, Valerie Mcclain
Articles & Chapters
The robust neuroimaging debate has dealt mostly with philosophical questions about free will, responsibility, and the relationship between brain abnormalities, violence and crime. This debate, however, obscures several important issues of criminal procedure to which little attention has as of yet been paid: 1) an indigent defendant's right of access to expert testimony in cases where neuroimaging tests might be critical, 2) a defendant's competency to consent to the imposition of a neuroimaging test; and 3) the impact of antipsychotic medications on a defendant's brain at the time that such a test is performed. This article will consider these questions …
Hidden Agendas And Ripple Effects: Implications Of Four Recent Supreme Court Decisions For Forensic Mental Health Professionals, Michael L. Perlin
Hidden Agendas And Ripple Effects: Implications Of Four Recent Supreme Court Decisions For Forensic Mental Health Professionals, Michael L. Perlin
Articles & Chapters
Supreme Court decisions have implications far beyond the legal principles they articulate, and it is essential that individuals working in the forensic mental health and correctional systems understand the extent to which such decisions can affect their practice and the facilities in which they work. The seemingly-unrelated cases of Godinez v. Moran (1993) (establishing a unitary standard for the determinations of competency to plead guilty, competency to waive counsel, and competency to stand trial), Kansas v. Hendricks (1997) (upholding the constitutionality of one state's “Sexually Violent Predator Act”), Pennsylvania Department of Corrections v. Yeskey (1998) (ruling that the Americans with …