Law Commons^™

"Simplify You, Classify You": Stigma, Stereotypes And Civil Rights In Disability Classification Systems, Michael L. Perlin

Michael L Perlin

Abstract:

In this paper I consider the question of the extent to which sanism and pretextuality - the factors that contaminate all of mental disability law - do or do not equally contaminate the special education process, and the decision to label certain children as learning disabled. The thesis of this paper is that the process of labeling of children with intellectual disabilities implicates at least five conflicts and clusters of policy issues:

1. The need to insure that all children receive adequate education

2. The need to insure that the cure is not worse than the illness (that is, …

Ain't No Goin' Back: Teaching Mental Disability Law Courses Online, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

An Internet-Based Mental Disability Law Program: Implications For Social Change In Nations With Developing Economies, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights And Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Universal Factors, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

An examination of comparative mental disability law reveals that there are at least five dominant, universal, core factors that must be considered carefully in any evaluation of the key question of whether international human rights standards have been violated. Each of these five factors is a reflection of the shame that the worldwide state of mental disability law brings to all of us who work in this field. Each is tainted by the pervasive corruption of sanism that permeates all of mental disability law. Each reflects a blinding pretextuality that contaminates legal practice in this area.

These are the factors …

You Got No Secrets To Conceal: Considering The Application Of The Tarasoff Doctrine Abroad, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights And Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Role Of Institutional Psychiatry In The Suppression Of Political Dissent, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

For many years, institutional psychiatry was a major tool in the suppression of political dissent. Moreover, it appears painfully clear that, while the worst excesses of the past have mostly disappeared, the problem is not limited to the pages of history. What is more, the revelations of the worst of these abuses (and the concomitant rectification of many of them) may, paradoxically, have created the false illusion that all the major problems attendant to questions of institutional treatment and conditions in these nations have been solved. This is decidedly not so.

Remarkably, the issue of the human rights of persons …

May You Stay Forever Young: Robert Sadoff And The History Of Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

The path of mental disability law over the past 35 years bears the stamp of the work of Dr. Robert L. Sadoff, one of the leading forensic psychiatrists in the nation. This article tracks the development of civil commitment law, right to treatment law, and right to refuse treatment law, and demonstrates the crucial roles that Dr. Sadoff has played in each of these.

Therapeutic Jurisprudence And Outpatient Commitment Law: Kendra’S Law As Case Study, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

What's Good Is Bad, What's Bad Is Good, You'll Find Out When You Reach The Top, You're On The Bottom: Are The Americans With Disabilities Act (And Olmstead V. L.C.) Anything More Than 'Idiot Wind', Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Mental Disability law is contaminated by "sanism," an irrational prejudice similar to such other irrational prejudices as racism and sexism. The passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) - a statute that focused specifically on questions of stereotyping and stigma - appeared at first to offer an opportunity too deal frontally with sanist attitudes and, optimally, to restructure the way that citizens with mental disabilities were dealt with by the remainder of society. However, in its first decade, the ADA did not prove to be a panacea for such persons. The Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmstead v. L.C. …

Their Promises Of Paradise: Will Olmstead V. L.C. Resuscitate The Constitutional Least Restrictive Alternative Principle In Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

This article argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Olmstead v. L.C., 119 S. Ct. 2176 (1999), finding a qualified right to community treatment and services for certain institutionalized persons under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and endorsing an "integration mandate," forces us to reconsider the role of the "least restrictive alternative" in institutional mental disability law, and may serve to resuscitate and revitalize the constitutional foundations of that principle in this area of the law. In this context, Olmstead has the capacity to be the Supreme Court's most therapeutic mental disability law decision since that Court decided, in …

A Law Of Healing, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Corrections Law: The Supreme Court And Treatment In Correctional And Forensic Mental Health Facilities: Recent Trends And Decisions, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Sanism, Social Science, And The Development Of Mental Disability Law Jurisprudence, Michael L. Perlin, D.A. Dorfman

Articles & Chapters

This article examines the way that "sanist" attitudes (attitudes driven by the same kind of irrational, unconscious and bias-driven stereotypes exhibited in racist and sexist decisionmaking) lead to "pretextual" decisions (in which dishonest testimony is either explicitly or implicitly accepted) in mental disability law jurisprudence. In conjunction with these sanist ends, social science data is teleologically employed by legal decisionmakers, so that it is privileged when it supports a conclusion that the fact-finder wishes to reach but subordinated when it questions such a conclusion. The article examines recent Supreme Court cases in an effort to determine the extent of domination …

Decoding Right To Refuse Treatment Law, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

What Is Therapeutic Jurisprudence?, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Ten Years After: Evolving Mental Health Advocacy And Judicial Trends, Michael L. Perlin

Fordham Urban Law Journal

"Address to the Mental Health Legal Advocacy Symposium, "Current Issues in Law and Psychiatry," New York, New York, May 30, 1985." This speech provides an overview of trends in mental disability law as they evolved from 1972 to 1982. It also explores social, economic, and political developments impacting on mental health advocacy, and looks at both seminal supreme court cases and lower courts' responses. It finds an ambivalent Supreme Court without a clear position on many issues related to mentally disabled individuals.

Economic Rights Of The Institutionalized Mentally Disabled, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

The Privilege Against Self-Incrimination In Civil Commitment Proceedings, Marianne Wesson

Publications

No abstract provided.