Suffrage for People with Intellectual Disabilities and Mental Illness: Observations on a Civic Controversy.
Suffrage for People with Intellectual Disabilities and Mental Illness: Observations on a Civic Controversy.
Yale J Health Policy Law Ethics. Winter 2017;17(1):209-250
Authors: Kopel C
Abstract
Most electoral democracies, including forty-three states in the United States,
deny people the right to vote on the basis of intellectual disability or mental
illness. Scholars in several fields have addressed these disenfranchisements,
including legal scholars who analyze their validity under U.S. constitutional law
and international-human-rights law, philosophers and political scientists who
analyze their validity under democratic theory, and mental-health researchers
who analyze their relationship to scientific categories. This Note reviews the
current state of the debate across these fields and makes three contentions: (a)
pragmatic political considerations have blurred the distinction between
disenfranchisement provisions based on cognitive capacity and those based on
personal status; (b) proposals that advocate voting by proxy trivialize the broad
civic purpose of the franchise; and (c) the persistence of disenfranchisement on
the basis of mental illness inevitably contributes to silencing socially disfavored
views and lifestyles. Accordingly, the Note cautions reformers against
advocating for capacity assessment or proxy voting, and emphasizes the
importance of disassociating the idea of mental illness from voting capacity.
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Source: Yale journal of health policy, law, and ethics - Category: Medical Law Tags: Yale J Health Policy Law Ethics Source Type: research
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