Disability Law Commons^™

Life's Hurried Tangled Road: A Therapeutic Jurisprudence Analysis Of Why Dedicated Counsel Must Be Assigned To Represent Persons With Mental Disabilities In Community Settings, Alison Lynch, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

This paper will be published as part of a symposium issue of Behavioral Sciences and Law.

Although counsel is now assigned in all jurisdictions to provide legal representation to persons facing involuntary civil commitment, such counsel is rarely available to persons with mental disabilities in other settings outside the hospital. In this paper, we strongly urge that such representation also be made available to this population in community settings. The scope of this representation must include any involvement with the criminal justice system that currently does not fall within the scope of indigent counsel assignment decisions such as Gideon v. …

Mental Disability Law: Cases And Materials, 3rd Ed (2017), Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo, Alison Lynch

Books

This comprehensive casebook covers all areas of civil commitment law, institutional rights law, community rights law, sex offenders law, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Mental Disability Law also explores all aspects of the criminal process, including all criminal competencies, the insanity defense, trial practice issues, sentencing and the death penalty. It is the only casebook available that considers the important factors that have shaped mental disability law — sanism, pretextuality, heuristics and false “ordinary common sense.” The third edition includes expanded new sections on therapeutic jurisprudence and international human rights law.

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 …

"Toiling In The Danger And In The Morals Of Despair": Risk, Security, Danger, The Constitution, And The Clinician's Dilemma, Michael L. Perlin, Alison Lynch

Articles & Chapters

Persons institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals and “state schools” for those with intellectual disabilities have always been hidden from view. Such facilities were often constructed far from major urban centers, availability of transportation to such institutions was often limited, and those who were locked up were, to the public, faceless and often seen as less than human.

Although there has been regular litigation in the area of psychiatric (and intellectual disability) institutional rights for 40 years, much of this case law entirely ignores forensic patients – mostly those awaiting incompetency-to-stand trial determinations, those found permanently incompetent to stand trial, those acquitted …