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The Search For Due Process In Civil Commitment Hearings: How Procedural Realities Have Altered Substantive Standards, Christyne E. Ferris

Vanderbilt Law Review

The civil commitment of mentally ill individuals presents the legal system with an intractable question: When should the law deprive someone of the fundamental right to liberty based on a prediction of future dangerousness? Advocates of both increased and decreased levels of civil commitment offer compelling case studies to help resolve the question. The former point to high profile events like the Virginia Tech shooting, in which mandatory incapacitation of the perpetrator at the first sign of mental illness could have prevented a senseless tragedy. The latter highlight the lives of individuals like Kenneth Donaldson, whose father had him committed …