ABSTRACT
Involuntary commitment proceedings provoke collisions between medical, legal, and humanitarian concerns. Consider the diverse issues raised in the following exchange between a district attorney and a psychiatrist who has been called to testify that patient Howard Kimel should be committed. While involuntary commitment laws ostensibly govern the commitment process, those laws must be concretely implemented; the law must be articulated with the practical features of the case at hand. A range of factors not directly related to candidate patient characteristics has also been associated with commitment decisions. While commitment proceedings provide a measure of due process and advocacy, they hardly resemble criminal or civil proceedings where legal adversaries single-mindedly contest case outcomes. A variety of persons are involved in producing commitment decisions, though some of them seldom appear in court.
