Law Commons^™

Using Domestic Law To Move Toward A Recognition Of Universal Legal Capacity For Persons With Disabilities, Leslie Salzman

Articles

This symposium explores the meaning of personhood as it is or should be applied to persons with disabilities. This panel focuses on the concept of legal capacity-the ability to make decisions about one’s life, to exercise agency, and to have those decisions recognized by third parties. For my part, I would like to discuss how we might use domestic law—specifically the integration mandate of Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act and substantive due process—to help us move toward a recognition of universal legal capacity regardless of disability and bring meaningful changes to domestic guardianship regimes. While Article 12 …

Legal Capacity For All: Including Older Persons In The Shift From Adult Guardianship To Supported Decision-Making, Rebekah Diller

Articles

For the last several decades, guardianship has been the subject of continual calls for reform, often spurred by revelations of guardian malfeasance and other abuses in the system. Recent developments in international human rights law pose a more fundamental challenge to the institution. Under Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), governments may not deprive individuals of their “legal capacity”—or right to make decisions and have those decisions recognized as legally binding—on the grounds of disability. In the wake of the CRPD, the concept of supported decision-making has gained growing acceptance as …

The Second Circuit And Social Justice, Matthew Diller, Alexander A. Reinert

Articles

The Second Circuit is renowned for its landmark rulings in fields such as white collar crime and securities law — bread and butter issues growing out of Wall Street’s preeminence in the financial landscape of the nation. At the same time, the Second Circuit has a long tradition of breaking new ground on issues of social justice. Unlike some circuit courts which have reputations in the area of social justice built around one or two fields, such as the Fifth Circuit’s pioneering role in civil rights litigation or the Ninth Circuit’s focus on immigration, there is no one area of …

Rethinking Guardianship (Again): Substituted Decision Making As A Violation Of The Integration Mandated Of Title Ii Of The Americans With Disabilities Act, Leslie Salzman

Articles

In every state, when an adult has a diminished capacity to make decisions about personal affairs or property management, a court may transfer the individual’s right to make decisions to a guardian. This Article argues that, in most cases, it would be preferable to support decision making rather than supplant it through guardianship, and then seeks to locate a right to receive such support as a less restrictive alternative to the substituted decision making that characterizes guardianship.

Building on the reasoning in Olmstead v. L.C. and subsequent decisions interpreting the Americans with Disabilities Act’s integration mandate, this Article argues that …

Sterilization, State Action, And The Concept Of Consent, Monroe E. Price, Robert A. Burt

Articles

A line demarking the propriety of state intervention into the lives of individuals has never been adequately drawn. It is not surprising that such a line is practically nonexistent, from the point of view of legal analysis, when the people subject to intervention are considered mentally retarded. Too infrequently the medical and privacy rights of these individuals go unrecognized and unheeded. There are several factors which collectively account for this.