Law and Race Commons^™

On Desolation Row: The Blurring Of The Borders Between Civil And Criminal Mental Disability Law, And What It Means To All Of Us, Michael L. Perlin, Deborah Dorfman, Naomi Weinstein

Articles & Chapters

One of the great tensions of mental disability law is the unresolved, trompe d’oeil question of whether it is a subset of the civil law, of the criminal law, or something entirely different. The resolution of this question is not an exercise in formalism or pigeonholing, but is critical to an understanding of the future direction of mental disability law, the deeper meaning of US Supreme Court cases and important state legislative initiatives, and the whole array of hidden issues and agendas that lurk under the surface of mental disability law-decision making. As mental disability law has matured, a dual …

Tolling For The Aching Ones Whose Wounds Cannot Be Nursed’: The Marginalization Of Racial Minorities And Women In Institutional Mental Disability Law, Michael L. Perlin, Heather Ellis Cucolo

Articles & Chapters

Individuals with mental disabilities have traditionally been and continue to be subjected to rights violations and pervasive discrimination because of their mental disabilities. Seen as “the other,” individuals who are racial minorities and/or are women are marginalized to an even greater extent than other persons with mental disabilities in matters related to civil commitment and institutional treatment (especially involving theright to refuse medication).

It is impossible to examine these questions critically without coming to grips with the ways that expert testimony — testimony that is essential and necessary in all these cases — is infected with bias that leads to …

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

Articles & Chapters

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:

* The need to insure that all children receive adequate education

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

On Sanism, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.