STERILIZATION OF MENTAL DEFECTIVES

Authors

Burke Shartel, University of Michigan Law School

Abstract

In 1923 the legislature of Michigan passed an act "to authorize the sterilization of mentally defective persons". This act has recently been sustained in its main provisions by the Michigan supreme court in a case brought to test its constitutionality. Probably the United States Supreme Court will also have an opportunity to pass upon the validity of this law, but the Michigan decision, although not final on the question whether the sterilization of defectives is violative of the "due process clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment, is nevertheless very significant. It is the first instance so far as the writer can find in which a court of last resort has sustained a law providing for what is termed "eugenical sterilization". A brief consideration of this legislation ought therefore to be of interest.

Recommended Citation

Burke Shartel, STERILIZATION OF MENTAL DEFECTIVES, 24 Mich. L. Rev. 1 (1925).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol24/iss1/2