Law Commons^™

The Virtue Of Vulnerability: Mindfulness And Well-Being In Law Schools And The Legal Profession, Nathalie Martin

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the role of vulnerability in transforming individual relationships, particularly the attorney-client relationship. In this essay, Martin argues that broadening our expressions can improve our client relations and decrease the likelihood that when that inevitable mistake occurs, we will be sued for it. Also, based upon virtue ethics, that practicing vulnerability is also virtuous and thus worthwhile in and of itself.

This essay starts by describing the traits people look for in lawyers as well as evidence that clients often feel that their lawyers are less than human. Then examines how legal education contributes to this problem by …

Pursuing Justice For The Mentally Disabled, Grant H. Morris

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

This article considers whether lawyers act as zealous advocates when they represent mentally disordered, involuntarily committed patients who wish to assert their right to refuse treatment with psychotropic medication. After discussing a study that clearly demonstrates that lawyers do not do so, the article explores the reasons for this inappropriate behavior. Michael Perlin characterizes the problem as “sanism,” which he describes as an irrational prejudice against mentally disabled persons of the same quality and character as other irrational prejudices that cause and are reflected in prevailing social attitudes of racism, sexism, homophobia, and ethnic bigotry. The article critiques Perlin’s characterization …

Mental Disorder And The Civil/Criminal Distinction, Grant H. Morris

University of San Diego Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series

This essay, written as part of a symposium issue to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the University of San Diego Law School, discusses the evaporating distinction between sentence-serving convicts and mentally disordered nonconvicts who are involved in, or who were involved in, the criminal process–people we label as both bad and mad. By examining one Supreme Court case from each of the decades that follow the opening of the University of San Diego School of Law, the essay demonstrates how the promise that nonconvict mentally disordered persons would be treated equally with other civilly committed mental patients was made and …