The Disability Rights Anticanon

Abstract

There are certain Supreme Court cases most Americans consider in retrospect to be so objectionable or unconscionable in their outcomes that they are, as Jamal Green has described them, anticanonical. The traditional anticanon consists of four cases: Dred Scott, Plessy, Lochner, and Korematsu. Drawing from the Green article and scholarship discussing the worst cases of all time, this article proposes three additional candidates for membership in this pantheon of error: Buck v. Bell, Pennhurst v. Halderman II, and Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett.

Keywords: Disability Rights, Buck v. Bell, Pennhurst, Cummings, Garrett, Anticanon