Medical Humanities Blog |
| On Bad Science & Bad Law: Psychiatry and Involuntary Civil Commitment in American Law Posted: 29 Apr 2011 08:16 PM PDT Samantha Godwin (University College London & Georgetown Law) has posted a paper on SSRN entitled Bad Science Makes Bad Law: How Deference Afforded to Psychiatry Undermines Civil Liberties. Like most papers on SSRN, it is available full-text, open access. Here is the Abstract: Courts and lawmakers trust psychiatric expertise when making judicial and public policy decisions concerning mental health, but is this trust well placed? This paper adopts a philosophy of science approach informed by medical research to evaluating the validity of psychiatric classification. This provides the basis for an interdisciplinary critical analysis of civil commitment law and use of psychiatric expert witnesses in light of legal evidence standards. This analysis demonstrates that involuntary civil commitment as it now stands is incompatible with broader due process and civil rights concerns and affords an unjustifiable evidentiary status to psychiatric diagnosis. The paper is recommended.  |
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