Disability Law Commons^™

There's Voices In The Night Trying To Be Heard: The Potential Impact Of The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities On Domestic Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin, Naomi Weinstein

Articles & Chapters

This paper carefully examines, through a therapeutic jurisprudence framework, the likely impact of the ratification of this UN Convention on society’s sanist attitudes towards persons with mental disabilities. We argue that it is impossible to consider the impact of anti-discrimination law on persons with mental disabilities without a full understanding of how sanism -- an irrational prejudice of the same quality and character of other irrational prejudices that cause (and are reflected in) prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry -- permeates all aspects of the legal system and the entire fabric of American society.

Notwithstanding nearly …

God Said To Abraham/Kill Me A Son: Why The Insanity Defense And The Incompetency Status Are Compatible With And Required By The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities And Basic Principles Of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Interpretations of the General Comments to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — that command the abolition of the insanity defense and the incompetency status — make no theoretical or conceptual sense, disregard the history of how society has treated persons with serious mental disabilities who are charged with crime, and will lead to predictable torture of this population in prison, at the hands of both prison guards and other prisoners. Such interpretation also flies in the face of every precept of therapeutic jurisprudence. Support of this position exhibits a startling lack of understanding of the …