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Contractual Incapacity and the Americans with Disabilities Act
Get PDFThe doctrine of contractual incapacity allows people with mental disabilities to avoid their contractual liability. Its underlying premise is that the law has an obligation to protect people with such disabilities both from themselves and from unscrupulous people who would take advantage of them; mental incapacity provides this protection by rendering certain contracts unenforceable. The Disability Rights Movement ( DRM ), however, has challenged such protective legal doctrines, as they rest on outmoded concepts about people with mental disabilities.
This essay argues that the mental incapacity doctrine undermines the goals of the DRM and the legislative goals of the Americans with Disabilities Act. First, the doctrine reinforces stereotypes about people with mental disabilities, contributing to the negative social construction of disability. Second, it contributes to the social exclusion of people with mental disabilities, as the threat of contract rescission discourages commerce with people with mental disabilities. Third, the doctrine unjustifiably imposes a requirement of rationality upon transactions entered into by people with mental disabilities. Finally, the doctrine demeans people with disabilities by shielding them from the risk-taking that is an integral part of life.
To mitigate the harm caused by contractual incapacity I propose that the doctrine be restricted to people who were subject to a plenary guardianship when they entered into the contract. Such a restriction is an imperfect proposal, but it strikes a better balance between the rights of people with mental disabilities and the mental incapacity doctrine than currently exists
Who Takes the Lead?: Comparative Insights on Arbitrability, the Delegation Clause, and the Supreme Court of the United States
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Exonerating the Wrongfully Convicted
No full textChapter 2 examines the critical role DNA analysis has played in exonerating the wrongfully convicted. Since the first DNA exoneration in 1988 of Gary Dotson, falsely convicted of rape in Illinois, hundreds of people have been exonerated through DNA analysis, including many who were on death row; minority groups have been disproportionately represented (approximately 70%). This chapter examines the various reasons that innocent people have been convicted, including coerced confessions and mistaken eyewitness identifications, and discusses several cases in which DNA evidence led to exoneration. It also discusses the establishment of the innocence movement, from the founding in 1983 of Centurion Ministries, an organization devoted to freeing innocent people from prison; to the formation in 1992 of the Innocence Project, which used DNA to free the innocent; to the global movement of today, in which more than 100 innocence organizations around the world work on reform and litigation
Compelling California-Based In-Person Deposition Testimony of a Foreign Resident Through PMQ/PMK Procedures
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