Sexual predators and the structure of the mental health system: Expanding the normative focus of therapeutic jurisprudence.

Abstract

This article clarifies the normative focus of therapeutic jurisprudence and the sense in which that research program is appropriately considered normatively neutral. It then examines the principles of political morality underlying mental health law as health care and as social control. It advances a proposed structure of mental health law and of the mental health system that reflects these principles. Finally, it applies this analysis to recent cases involving sexual predators, concluding that these cases and the statutes on which they are based undermine the moral force of mental health law and of the more comprehensive institution of social control including the criminal law.