The issue of the human rights of people with mental disabilities has been ignored for decades by the international agencies vested with the protection of human rights on a global scale. It is only within the past several years that society has begun to understand that violations of persons' mental disability rights are violations of human rights. This is the first and only casebook that considers the intersection between international human rights law and comparative mental disability law; it provides a systematic investigation of all of the relevant issues. Topics covered include a comparison of civil and common law systems, an overview of international human rights law, an overview of regional human rights tribunals, an overview of U.S. constitutional mental disability law, mental disability law in an international human rights context, comparative mental disability law (civil and common, scholarly articles and case law), the use of institutional psychiatry as a means of suppressing political dissension, the “universal factors” in this area of law, and the globalization of disability law.