I began practicing law in 1971, and I became a full-time law professor in 1984. My primary focus — academic, advocacy, litigation — has always been on the rights of persons with mental disabilities, especially those institutionalized against their will. Until 2000 — putting aside the occasional paper presented at conferences in Canada and in Western Europe — however, my work focused exclusively on U.S.-based mental disability law. That state of affairs changed dramatically in 2000, and the years immediately following. And that change led to a substantial recalibration of all my work, and led, eventually, to this book. As I discuss in chapter 1, during that latter time period, I embarked on a series of site visits on behalf of Mental Disability Rights International (now Disability Rights International), the most important U.S. nongovernmental organization (NGO) dealing with the application of international human rights law and principles to persons with mental disabilities. At the same time, as part of New York Law School’s online, distance learning, mental disability law program, I taught courses in mental disability law in Japan and Nicaragua to cohorts of lawyers, mental health professionals, academics, legislators, and judges. I also began to lecture regularly and do advocacy trainings on mental disability law topics in Japan and throughout Central and Eastern Europe and Central and South America. In 2002 I convened a conference at New York Law School to consider the application of international human rights law to persons in institutions in Hungary and Bulgaria (see Perlin, 2002). I believe that that was the fi rst such program ever presented at a U.S.-based law school.