This book is the product of the conversations, ideas, and experiences, I have shared with many people, too numerous to mention here. Beginning as a young lawyer at the Mental Health Law Project (now the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law), I was motivated by the lives of my clients who had been locked away for decades in St. Elizabeth Hospital in Washington, DC. During those years, I had the privilege of working with Eric Rosenthal, who had just graduated from college, and who later became the founder of Mental Disability Rights International (now known as Disability Rights International or “DRI”), the first organization dedicated to ending torture, abuse, and segregation of people with disabilities throughout the world. My work with DRI since its founding in 1993, has shaped my thinking about many of the issues discussed in this volume. Therefore, I owe my appreciation to Eric Rosenthal and all of the other colleagues and friends with whom I have worked on disability rights advocacy in the US, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Egypt, Ghana, India, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, Palestine, Portugal, Turkey and Vietnam. I also thank the many law and other graduate students at Syracuse University College of Law (SU COL) who have taken my disability law related courses as well as the students in classes I have taught in other countries, especially in Israel and India, whose questions continually prompt deeper thought and examination of my own assumptions. I also wish to thank the many people with and without disabilities whom I came to know from 2001-06, during the drafting sessions of the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities at the United Nations. To these individuals and their organizations I am deeply grateful.