Sexuality, Disability and the Law: Beyond the Last Frontier?

Professor Michael Perlin will be discussing central themes from his recently published book 'Sexuality, Disability and the Law: Beyond the Last Frontier?' (2016, Palgrave Macmillan).

His paper will address issues of Disability and Sexuality, particularly focusing on the hostility that often emerges around relationships between adults with disabilities, the stereotypes at play and how such problems might be remedied.

Michael L. Perlin is Professor of Law Emeritus at New York Law School (NYLS), founding director of NYLS's Online Mental Disability Law Program, and founding director of NYLS's International Mental Disability Law Reform Project in its Justice Action Center. He is also the co-founder of Mental Disability Law and Policy Associates. 

He has written 31 books and nearly 300 articles on all aspects of mental disability law.

His most recent books are Mental Disability And The Death Penalty: The Shame Of The States (Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), and A Prescription For Dignity: Rethinking Criminal Justice And Mental Disability Law (Ashgate, 2013).

His treatise, Mental Disability Law: Civil And Criminal is universally seen as the standard text in the area; the third edition of that work (co-authored with Prof. Heather Ellis Cucolo) was published earlier this year (Lexis-Nexis Press); also forthcoming this year are books on sexuality and disability (Sexuality, Disability And The Law: Beyond The Last Frontier? (Palgrave Macmillan) (co-authored with Alison J. Lynch)), and on sex offender law (Shaming The Constitution: The Detrimental Results Of Sexual Violent Predator Legislation  (with Cucolo) (Temple University Press)).

An earlier book, The Jurisprudence Of The Insanity Defense (Carolina Academic Press, 1995) won the Manfred Guttmacher award of the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Psychiatry and Law as the best book published that year.