Disability Law Commons^™

Can Mental Health Professionals Predict Judicial Decisionmaking? Constitutional And Tort Liability Aspects Of The Right Of The Institutionalized Mentally Disabled To Refuse Treatment: On The Cutting Edge, Michael L. Perlin

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Barriers To Providing Effective Treatment: A Critique Of Revisions In Procedural,Substantive, And Dispositional Criteria In Involuntary Civil Commitment, Donald H. J. Hermann

Vanderbilt Law Review

Anyone spending time in a major urban center in the United States must be shocked by the significant number of mentally ill persons living on the streets--the "bag people" who sleep in door-ways, on steam grates, on subway stairs. These people represent a new lifestyle made possible in part by a policy of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, which has been motivated largely by economic considerations and rationalized as a matter of mental health law reform. Another major factor contributing to the increasing denial of treatment to the mentally ill has been a revision of the mental health statutes. A …

Sterilization Of Mentally Retarded Persons: Reproductive Rights And Family Privacy, Elizabeth S. Scott

Faculty Scholarship

Sterilization is one of the most frequently chosen forms of contraception in the world; many persons who do not want to have children select this simple, safe, and effective means of avoiding unwanted pregnancy. For individuals who are mentally disabled, however, sterilization has more ominous associations. Until recently, involuntary sterilization was used as a weapon of the state in the war against mental deficiency. Under eugenic sterilization laws in effect in many states, retarded persons were routinely sterilized without their consent or knowledge.

Sterilization law has undergone a radical transformation in recent years. Influenced by a distaste for eugenic sterilization …