Piloting Personhood: Reflections from the first year of a supported decision making project

The Symposium on Personhood and Civic Engagement by People with Disabilities included a variety of perspectives: legal, cultural, historical, philosophical, and educational, including a panel on “Legal Barriers to Personhood” from which this article was derived. This Article attempts to describe some of the lessons learned in the first year of an ongoing experiment in implementing legal capacity through supported decision-making (SDM). Demonstrating the success of this pilot project, the first in New York and the most extensive in the United States, is critical to influencing advocacy and legislative reform to promote and protect personhood.