Who Qualifies for Rights?

When does a person become disqualified for some or all of the rights associated with full citizenship? Who does qualify for rights? When mental health workers took Joyce Brown from her "home" on a New York City sidewalk and hospitalized her against her will, she defended herself by asserting her rights: to live where she wanted, to speak to the press to deride the city's policy, and to refuse unwanted psychiatric treatment. In theory, as a United States citizen, Brown possessed rights protecting her from governmental intrusion into her personal life. In practice, those rights were curtailed at the time of her civil commitment.Using the case of Joyce Brown as an example, Judith Lynn Failer explores the theoretical, legal, and practical justifications for limiting the rights of people who are involuntarily hospitalized. By looking at the reasons why law and theory say that some people diagnosed with mental illnesses no longer qualify for the full complement of constitutional rights, the author pieces together basic assumptions about who does, and who should, qualify for rights. Failer's analysis is motivated by her concern that people facing involuntary hospitalization stand to lose the most effective means they have of protecting themselves from abuse—their rights. She concludes that there is insufficient guidance for deciding who qualifies for regular rights and full citizenship. Finally, the author calls for the use of flexible standards to determine who should and who does qualify for rights.

Failer identifies six stock characters of people identified as mentally ill that are used in civil commitment cases to justify the status of a person under civil commitment: the economically deficient person, the bad family member, the sufferer, and the nonsurvivor are all people described as being in need, whose rights can be limited in a paternalistic sense, while the person considered a danger waiting to happen the one thought to be an imminent danger may, some argue, have their rights limited for the protection of the community.... Failer does not question whether civil commitment is always unjustified; but she does argue that a great deal of what now seems unremarkable to many observers outside the psychiatric system should, in fact, be subjected to critical reassessment., Tracing the 'bundle' of rights denied people labeled mentally ill from medieval legal statutes to the 1988 case of Joyce Brown in New York, Failer attempts to define the rights of full citizens by examining the civil rights withheld from the committable.... As an approach to defining the rights of citizenship,... there is much to recommend about this study. Summing Up: Highly recommended., Who Qualifies for Rights offers an important contribution to the literature on the legal deprivation of rights and the constitution of citizenship.... Failer's discussion of the issues present in the civil commitment of the mentally ill and the complications presented by homelessness is clear, thorough, nuanced, and balanced. Accessible to advanced undergraduates, Who Qualifies for Rights is a fine example of careful analysis of a legal and normative problem with implications for broad questions about citizenship, personhood, and rights.

Judith Lynn Failer is Assistant Professor of Political Science and American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.