This comprehensive volume assesses the relationship between legal rights and disability and the effect of law, legal process and third party professional intervention on the lives of people with disabilities. Stressing the crucial role played by disabled people themselves in fulfilling the promise of the worldwide rights movement, the chapters examine this relationship across a variety of themes, stressing the legal elements of each issue, and the extent to which law can assist in strengthening individual rights in that area. The contributors, who are all either academics or other professional experts in their field, write in a jargon free accessible style. The volume will be of interest to lawyers, human rights activists, health care professionals and to disabled people generally. The main areas covered in the volume are: * new perspectives on working in partnership with disabled people; * the changing attitudes to the rights of people with disabilities across the globe; * improvements to the rights of disabled people through legal process, using national and international law; * an examination of the rights and entitlement of disabled people to community care, housing, employment, education, and special services for children; * disabled people and mental health law; * messages from disability research for law, practice and reform implications for research.