Regulating the Private Relations of Adults with Mental Disabilities: Old Laws, New Policies, Hollow Hopes

Recent legislative reforms have aimed to help people with mental disabilities pursue more “normal” lives. Yet, current laws regulating the mentally disableds' private relations continue to disenable them. Social scientists have asserted that people with mental disabilities vary widely in their individual competencies. Yet, laws tend to forgo an individualized approach to the mentally disabled in favor of broad restrictions on their rights to engage in sexual, marital, and parental relationships. Reviews of cases also show that when they challenge these restrictions, the mentally disabled tend to be required to demonstrate a higher level of morality and functioning than non‐disabled. Reforming these restrictive legal rules requires an unlikely, but possible, concordance between social science and the law.