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14 Rutgers L.J. 595 (1982-1983)
Anti-Institutionalization and the Supreme Court

handle is hein.journals/rutlj14 and id is 631 raw text is: ANTI-INSTITUTIONALIZATION AND THE SUPREME COURTt David Ferleger* I. INTRODUCTION Did you ever see a kid scared of himself? That's how it was. Forcing people to do things outside their own will. It looked bloody. It looked terrible. The way the patients looked, the way the patients sat on the ground. It looked like a dead home. I wish they would take some bigger shots to look around those places and see what's going on, day through night. I've been wishing that for a long time. It's just like people doing something behind closed doors, in secret, and the patients are afraid to say. That patients get beat up if they say. It don't happen when the bigshots come; it happens when they go.' The movement to achieve social justice for the differently-abledI is sparked by an alliance of people and their organizations, including: consumers and victims of services; parents, families and friends; psychologists, physicians, social workers, direct care aides and other service providers; state institution administrators and bureaucrats; and lawyers and judges. The involvement of the legal profession in this and other reform movements is new.3 Until the 1960's, legal scholarship generally disregarded civil commit- t It is the policy of the Editorial Board of the Rutgers Law Journal to verify the substantive accuracy of all articles published in the Journal. Due to the limited acces- sability of some of the material in this article, however, not all of the sources have been verified. It is the belief of the author, in which the Editorial Board concurs, that there is a need to present the material cited herein as a means of providing a basic understanding of the issues which face people with disabilities. * Adjunct Professor of Law, New York University School of Law. B.A., Univer- sity of Pennsylvania, 1969; J.D., University of Pennsylvania Law School, 1972. This Article is dedicated to my parents and sister, and to Carol Robinson. The author thanks Gayle Hacker of the Rutgers Law Journal for her editorial advice. 1. Interview with Alfred Pitts, former resident of Pennhurst State School and Hospital and other institutions for people with retardation (November 15, 1982). 2. Differently-abled is a more positive and more accurate description than handicapped or disabled, words which have acquired negative connotations, especially to those people to whom they are applied. We need to move beyond differently-abled to terms which are descriptive of relevant qualities and needs. 3. It is distinctive to our times that the judiciary has become a forum in which attorneys have pressed for social change. Rothman, The Courts and Social Reform: A Postprogressive Outlook, 6 LAW & HUM. BEHAv. 113 (1982). Rothman explains:

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