Law Commons^™

Res Judicata And Multiple Disability Applications: Fulfilling The Praiseworthy Intentions Of The Fourth And Sixth Courts, Amber Mae Otto

Vanderbilt Law Review

In the United States, the application process to receive disability benefits through the Social Security Administration is often a tedious, multistep procedure. The process becomes even more complex if a claimant has filed multiple disability applications covering different time periods. In that circumstance, the question arises as to whether an administrative law judge hearing a claimant’s second application must make the same findings as the administrative law judge who heard the first application. In other words, how should res judicata function in the administrative law context when a claimant has filed for disability multiple times? Currently, circuits differ on this …

The Criminalization Of Mental Illness: How Theoretical Failures Create Real Problems In The Criminal Justice System, Georgia L. Sims

Vanderbilt Law Review

When Andrea Yates drowned her five children, she believed she was preventing Satan from infiltrating their souls. Rusty Yates blamed both the mental health system and the criminal justice system for his wife's actions and also for her initial conviction. Andrea Yates suffered from post-partum depression and psychosis; had attempted suicide twice; had been hospitalized on several occasions for psychiatric treatment; and was found not guilty by reason of insanity in her 2006 retrial.' Although Yates likely will spend the rest of her life in a mental institution, she will receive mental health treatment throughout her time at the facility. …

Hedonic Damages, Hedonic Adaptation, And Disability, Samuel R. Bagenstos, Margo Schlanger

Vanderbilt Law Review

Over the past quarter century, the concept of "adaptive preferences" has played an important role in debates in law, economics, and political philosophy. As Professor Jon Elster has described this psychological phenomenon, "people tend to adjust their aspirations to their possibilities." A number of prominent scholars have argued that the existence of adaptive preferences "raises serious problems for neoclassical economics and for unambivalent enthusiasm for freedom of choice." Because our current preferences are constrained by the opportunities available to us, proponents of adaptive preference theory contend, those preferences may not be the best guide to what is in our interests; …

The Untold Story Of The Rest Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Michael Waterstone

Vanderbilt Law Review

The Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA")' can be described as the All-Star team of civil rights legislation. The framers of the ADA sought to create sweeping change in nearly every facet of the lives of people with disabilities. To achieve these ambitious goals, the framers assembled the best and brightest parts of other civil rights legislation: pieces of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 04 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Fair Housing Act. The end result was a comprehensive statute with three major parts: …

Perceived Disabilities, Social Cognition, And "Innocent Mistakes", Michelle A. Travis

Vanderbilt Law Review

Employment discrimination takes many more forms than the current models in our antidiscrimination laws explicitly recognize. As new forms of employment discrimination are identified, courts must decide whether or not to apply our existing statutes, which many continue to believe were narrowly constructed to focus primarily on conscious acts of prejudice. Litigants have had more success challenging that notion with respect to Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (the "ADA"), because Congress was relatively clearer about the multifaceted nature of disability discrimination. Legislators openly acknowledged that disability discrimination may result not only from invidious animus, but …

Technology As A Panacea: Why Pregnancy-Related Problems Should Be Defined Without Regard To Mitigating Measures Under The Ada, Jessica L. Wilson

Vanderbilt Law Review

In Gabriel v. City of Chicago, the Northern District of Illinois held that, while pregnancy is not a per se disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA"),' pregnancy-related problems can be considered disabilities under the ADA. The holding in Gabriel, however, was not unique, as many other district courts have reached the same conclusion regarding pregnancy-related problems. The real question in cases such as Gabriel is whether the pregnancy-related problem at issue constitutes a disability under the ADA. This question requires an analysis of whether the pregnancy-related problem is a physical impairment that substantially limits a major life activity …

Current Issues Regarding The Americans With Disabilities Act, John-Paul Motley

Vanderbilt Law Review

President George Bush, noting that "statistics consistently demonstrate that disabled people are the poorest, least educated, and largest minority in America," signed the Americans with Disabilities Act ("ADA") into law in 1990. The ADA prohibits private employers from discriminating against a "qualified individual with a disability" in employment decisions. The Act defines a disability in one of three ways: (1) a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities; (2) a record of such an impairment; or (3) being regarded by others as having such an impairment. The ADA also prohibits employers from inquiring into …

Addiction As Disability: The Protection Of Alcoholics And Drug Addicts Under The Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990, Reese J.J. Henderson

Vanderbilt Law Review

With the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), Congress finally acknowledged that employment discrimination against the disabled continues to be a serious problem in the United States. Approximately forty-three million Americans are disabled. As many as two-thirds of disabled individuals of working age are unemployed, and half of all adults with disabilities have household incomes of fifteen thousand dollars or less. Although most unemployed disabled individuals depend on insurance payments or government benefits for support, polls reveal that a majority would rather work than depend on such assistance. The ADA provides a comprehensive plan for main-streaming …

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 …

Insurance -- 1954 Tennessee Survey, Robert W. Sturdivant

Vanderbilt Law Review

There were only two cases reported during the survey period on the subject of liability insurance. In the first of these, Rural Education Ass'n, Inc. v. American Fire & Casualty Co., the insured had notice of an accident on the day it occurred. Suit for injuries growing out of the accident was filed nearly seven months later, and not until the day after suit was filed did the insured notify the insurer of the accident. After judgment was obtained against it, the insured brought the present suit against its insurer. The insurance policy required that notice be given "as soon …

Insurance -- 1960 Tennessee Survey, William R. Andersen

Vanderbilt Law Review

One of the most delicate problems in insurance underwriting is that of describing the events whose occurrence is the primary condition of the insurer's obligation to pay. Several interesting cases were decided during the survey period involving disputes over whether or not an insured event had occurred.

The Public Employee And His Government: Conditions And Disabilities Of Public Employment, Jerome J. Shestack

Vanderbilt Law Review

Even before Mr. Marbury, the public employee and his government have frequently found themselves on opposite sides of the counsel table. Not that public employees are a particularly litigious lot. Faced, however, with the willingness of administrators to deal with them politically and the unwillingness of legislators to protect them adequately, their resort to the courts was inevitable. But the courts also often provided inadequate protection. Decisions which combined ancient concepts with more than a touch of political realism accorded scant recognition to the substantial interests of the ever-growing number of public employees.

In recent years, the traditional cliches in …

Encouragement Of Employment Of The Handicapped, Howard D. Fabing, Roscoe L. Barrow

Vanderbilt Law Review

Six million Americans of employable age have a physical impairment which is sufficiently serious to hinder them in finding employment. Included among the handicapped are orthopedics, those having defective vision, hearing or speech, cardiacs, diabetics, epileptics, and others. Employment of handicapped persons is in the interest of society. Employed, the handicapped are tax-payers; unemployed, they are tax-spenders. If they are not given the employment which they desire the handicapped are forced to become a charge on society. To secure their employment, however, is a problem of great magnitude, requiring the cooperation of employers, employees, interested civic organizations and governmental agencies …

Intervertebral Disc Injuries In Workmen's Compensation, Larry A. Bear

Vanderbilt Law Review

No lawyer regularly involved in workmen's compensation litigation can do a worthwhile job for his client unless he has a comprehensive and intelligent acquaintance with all branches of medicine. In the ordinary course of his practice, the workmen's compensation lawyer must deal with all types of industrial diseases, and even with disorders in the field of neurology and psychiatry.' Familiarity with a variety of medical conditions is made necessary because of such basic medico-legal problems as causation, involving the industrial or non-industrial origin of the disability at issue, dilration and the like. Of all the industrial injuries with which the …

Medico-Legal Aspects Of The Nervous System As A Functioning Unit Of The Body, F. Keith Bradford, Hubert W. Smith

Vanderbilt Law Review

We have had the pleasure of working together in recent years on Law-Science problems. During that time we have become increasingly convinced that it is necessary for trial lawyer and scientist alike to think of the human being in terms of the nine main organ systems,'reserving a tenth category for the field of personality as the latter represents a synthesis of component structures and functions into variable reaction and behavior patterns. An injury or disability may involve impairment or destruction of an an atomic member or of physiological function; it may involve effects on personality, or psychic values, alone, without …