National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy
Michael L. Perlin is Professor
of Law at New York Law School and an Adjunct
Professor NYU Medical Center, New York Medical College, and the University of Rochester
Medical Center. He was a member of the Task Force on Legal and Ethical Issues on President
Carter's Commission on Mental Health, is a former Director of the Division of Mental
Health Advocacy in the New Jersey Department of the Public Advocate, and Deputy Public
Defender in charge of the Mercer County (Trenton) NJ Office of the Public Defender.
Professor Perlin now serves on the National Advisory Board of the Institute of Mental
Disability and Law of the National Center for State Courts, and on the Board of Directors
of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health. His most recent books are International Human Rights and Comparative
Mental Disability Law and Lawyering
Skills in the Representation of Persons With Mental Disabilities. Other books include The Hidden Prejudice: Mental Disability on
Trial, and The Jurisprudence of the
Insanity Defense, which won the Manfred Guttmacher Award of the American Psychiatric
Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law as the best book of the year in
law and forensic psychiatry in 1994-95. Professor Perlin's five-volume treatise, Mental
Disability Law: Civil and Criminal, won the 1990 Walter Jeffords Writing Prize and
is the indispensable authority for legal practitioners. He is also the author of a
one-volume treatise on mental health law, Law and Mental Disability, has recently
published a casebook, Mental
Disability Law: Cases and Materials. He is also currently teaching an on-line,
distance learning course in mental Disability law, the only such course to be offered by
any American law school. Professor Perlin has also worked extensively with Mental Disability Rights International, offering workshops
and trainings to mental disability/human rights advocates in Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia
and Latvia. He graduated magna cum laude from Rutgers University and from Columbia
University Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
Professor Perlin is a prolific writer (having published well over 175 articles) and
wonderful speaker. Recent articles include "International Human
Rights and Comparative Mental Disability Law: The Role of Institutional Psychiatry in the
Suppression of Political Dissent." Other recent journal articles have focused on
the ADA and persons with mental disabilities ("Can Sanist Attitudes be
Undone?"); the impact of the ADA on the rights of institutionalized persons to have
voluntary sexual interaction and to refuse antipsychotic medication ("...Sex, Drugs,
the ADA, and Psychiatric Hospitalization;" and "Hospitalized Patients and
the Right to Sexual Interaction: Beyond the Last Frontier?"); the
inadequacy of counsel in right to refuse treatment cases; how the link made between
deinstitutionalization and current widespread homelessness is mythical; "sanism"
and pretextuality in judicial decision-making and the development of our laws; the
insanity defense; and "therapeutic jurisprudence." His most recent Keynote
presentation at a NARPA was be "On
Desolation Row: How Sexual Predator Laws Adversely Affect the Rights of Others with Mental
Illness Labels Who Are Caught in the Criminal Justice System."
In his spare time, Professor Perlin plays the clarinet in the Lawrence Township Community Band. He is an avid fan of baseball and opera, and is currently at work on an article on the jurisprudence of Bob Dylan. Presentations at recent NARPA conferences include, "Annie Hall Goes to Court: The State of Legal Advocacy in the Mental Health System," "The Right of Institutionalized Persons with Mental Disabilities to Voluntary Sexual Interaction: Beyond the Last Frontier?," "Planning the Ending of a System Reform Class Action Lawsuit: How will you know when you've won?," and "Regulation of the Use of Seclusion and Restraints in Mental Disability Law."