Excerpt from: Penn State Law Review (click for full article)
The law has traditionally responded to cognitive disability by authorizing surrogate decision-makers to make decisions on behalf of disabled individuals. However, supported decision-making, an alternative paradigm for addressing cognitive disability, is rapidly gaining political support. According to its proponents, supported decision-making empowers individuals with cognitive challenges by ensuring that they are the ultimate decision-maker but are provided support from one or more others, giving them the assistance they need to make decisions for themselves. This article describes supported decision-making and its normative appeal. It then provides a descriptive account of how supported decision-making works based on the empirical literature on supported decision-making as well as that on shared decision-making, a related model used in medical contexts. The article shows how employing supported decision-making in lieu of guardianship, or integrating it into the guardianship system, has the potential to promote the self-determination of persons with intellectual and cognitive disabilities consistent with international and national legal norms.
Comments