Emerging International Trends and Practices in Guardianship Law for People with Disabilities

In this article, the authors identify current trends in promoting supported decision-making as an alternative to guardianship for people with disabilities. Support for supported decision-making (SDM) and other reforms to guardianship can be found in international conventions and declarations (notably, Article 12 of the CRPD); Concluding Observations and General Comment No. 1 issued by the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; and in various countries (or states/provinces/localities within those countries), including the United States, where developments in state legislation, state court cases (including the Jenny Hatch case, in which one of the co-authors was counsel and another testified as an expert witness), pilot projects, and financial support from the federal government have begun to articulate a robust vision of SDM

Clinical Scholarship and the Justice Mission

To many people, the relationship between clinical programs and the justice mission of American law schools is so clear as to be self-evident. These programs may pursue justice on behalf of individual clients or for groups of clients through class-action or other impact litigation. Moreover, clinical teachers frequently discuss with their students the need for the latter to serve justice in their legal careers, whether as the principal focus of their legal work or through pro bono publico activities. Indeed, for many law students, the law clinic may be the only place in which concerns about justice are discussed and, at least sometimes, acted upon. In this brief essay, I want to suggest that clinical scholarship is not an oxymoron. Such scholarship already has contributed to nascent understandings of the different meanings of justice within the academy. If it develops to its full potential, it can broaden still further our understanding of the various visions of justice that exist within both the academy and society at large

Optimal length and signal amplification in weakly activated signal transduction cascades

Weakly activated signaling cascades can be modeled as linear systems. The input-to-output transfer function and the internal gain of a linear system, provide natural measures for the propagation of the input signal down the cascade and for the characterization of the final outcome. The most efficient design of a cascade for generating sharp signals, is obtained by choosing all the off rates equal, and a ``universal'' finite optimal length.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figures, LaTeX fil

Tales from a Supportive Guardianship

F or a number of years now, I have been a committed advocate of supported decision making as an alternative to guardianship for people with intellectual disabilities. In writings, presentations, classes, and meetings,1 I have argued that supported decision making is not only less restrictive than guardianship but more consistent with principles of client-centered counseling and person-centered planning that animate approaches to lawyering and the delivery of services to people with intellectual disabilities. Even the most humane and limited forms of guardianship shift decision-making focus from the individual with a disability to his or her guardian or other surrogate decision maker. In contrast, although the person with an intellectual disability may get significant support from one or more supporters, that person remains the primary decision maker in his or her life

From the Editors

Although this issue arrives on desks roughly two years after the start of the coronavirus pandemic, it offers a degree of continuity with our usual fare concerning scholarship about legal education. Our next double-length issue will explore in depth matters of teaching modality, technology, and change connected with the ongoing pandemic. This issue offers fresh perspectives on matters of long-standing concern-line drawing, pro bono requirements, pedagogy, law student instruction of high school students, and bar exams. We found the articles, as well as the three book reviews that fill out this issue, to be engaging and insightful and we hope you agree