Disability Law Commons^™

Between A Bed And A Hard Place: How Washington Can Keep Psychiatric Patients In Treatment And Off The Streets, Spencer Babbitt

Seattle University Law Review

On February 27, 2013, ten psychiatric patients were being involuntarily detained in hospital emergency departments located in Pierce County under Washington State’s Involuntary Treatment Act (ITA). Despite the name of the law that authorized their detainment, these individuals were not receiving any psychiatric treatment during their confinement. Nor were they there as the result of a criminal conviction. The only thing these ten detainees were guilty of was being mentally ill. Under what is now considered to have been a misinterpretation of the ITA, counties across Washington had for years been confining mentally ill patients in hospitals not certified to …

A Female Disease: The Unintentional Gendering Of Fibromyalgia Social Security Claims, Dara Purvis

Dara Purvis

Social Security disability claims are not supposed to be decided based on the gender of the applicant. Reliance on the apparently neutral mechanism of clinical medical evidence, however, has a disproportionate impact on women bringing disability claims based on fibromyalgia. Recognizing and identifying disability has been delegated by Congress and the Social Security Administration almost entirely to physicians, based upon a misguided and mistaken belief that clinical medical evidence evaluated by a trained physician will answer with certainty whether an individual claimant is capable of working. Fibromyalgia, a diffuse syndrome characterized by excess pain that is overwhelmingly diagnosed in women …

The Right Of The Physically And Mentally Handicapped: Amendments Necessary To Guarantee Protection Through The Civil Rights Act Of 1964, Patrick T. Ryan

Akron Law Review

SINGLE STROKES of the government's pen can seldom alone accomplish social goals. To insure vitality, legislation requires review, revision and amendment. Though worthy of praise for initial and continuing contributions towards social betterment, the Civil Rights Act of 19641 falls into this classification. Its scope is too narrow because it fails to include a significant group of persons sorely in need of its protection. This legislation needs the depth evoked by its title rather than the limitations of its present language. Amendment is required to protect the rights of the physically and mentally handicapped.

Guardianship Of Adults With Mental Retardation: Towards A Presumption Of Competence, Amie L. Bruggeman

Akron Law Review

Statutes should be revised so that people with varying levels of mental retardation are allowed to live as independently as they are able. To achieve this goal, legislators and members of the legal community must become aware of the nature of mental retardation, consider the individual personhood of one having this condition, and devise a legal framework with enough flexibility to accommodate both the individual and society. Ohio's guardianship laws and their relationship to adults with mental retardation require analysis. Although progress has been made in Ohio towards the goal of facilitating maximum enjoyment of independence, the present guardianship laws …

Exhibits To Accompany Testimony & Statement Of Dean Hill Rivkin Before The Senate Judiciary Committee (21 April 2015), Dean H. Rivkin

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

Exhibits to accompany testimony and statement-of-record of Professor Dean Hill Rivkin (The University of Tennessee College of Law), as submitted on April 21, 2015, before a hearing convened by the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary: “Improving Accountability and Oversight of Juvenile Justice Grants.”

Social Security Disability Insurance And Supplemental Security Income, Jennifer L. Erkulwater

Political Science Faculty Publications

Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are the foundation of the social safety net for Americans with disabilities. Both provide cash benefits, and because neither program is limited to specific impairments or to workers in particular occupations, as is the case with many public and private disability plans, they are broadly accessible to the American people and the most expensive of the nation's disability benefit programs. Excluding expenditures for health care, DI and SSI combined account for almost three-quarters of annual federal spending on the disabled (U.S. GAO 1999).

Disability benefits policy, though, has long been …

Health Justice: A Framework (And Calll To Action) For The Elimination Of Health Inequity And Social Injustice, Emily A. Benfer

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Government Success Story: How Data Analysis By The Social Security Appeals Council (With A Push From The Administrative Conference Of The United States) Is Transforming Social Security Disability Adjudication, Jeffrey Lubbers, Gerald K. Ray

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

This Article for the special issue on the Administrative Conference of the United States ("ACUS") focuses on how a collaboration between ACUS and the Social Security Administration ("SSA") has helped SSA use data analysis to bring about significant improvements in the quality and consistency of disability case review. SSA's efforts to closely analyze numerous data points in the disability adjudication process (encouraged by ACUS recommendations) have produced information that has led to breakthroughs in how training is provided and feedback is given to Administrative Law Judges and other key staff, which has in turn led to improved productivity and accuracy …

Identity And Narrative: Turning Oppression Into Client Empowerment In Social Security Disability Cases, Jonel Newman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Medicaid At 50: No Longer Limited To The "Deserving" Poor?, David Orentlicher

Scholarly Works

Professor David Orentlicher considers the significance of the passage of the Affordable Care Act on the Medicaid program. He discusses the expansion of the program's recipients from merely children, pregnant women, single caretakers of children, and disabled persons to all persons up to 138% of the federal poverty level. Professor Orentlicher argues that the Medicaid expansion reflects concerns about the high costs of health care rather than an evolution in societal thinking about the "deserving" poor. As a result, the expansion may not provide a stable source of health care coverage for the expansion population.

Disability Pensions, Property Rights And Legitimate Expectations: Béláné Nagy V. Hungary, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins