This paper offers a strong critique of proposed laws which would provide adolescents with the legal right to oppose their placement by parents or court

in residential facilities. The authors, a psychiatrist and a lawyer, point out the basic misunderstanding of adolescent psychology implicit in such laws: the fact that adolescents, especially disturbed adolescents, communicate far more meaningfully in actions than in words. With several clinical examples, the authors document their thesis that creating a legal adversary relationship between adolescent and helping agents is therapeutically harmful. They do suggest that courts have a positive role to play in: 1) guaranteeing right to treatment for all institutionalized adolescents; 2) scrutinizing the degree to which residential institutions interfere with personal liberty of adolescents who are not shown to present a danger to themselves and others; and 3) reserving individual hearings only for those adolescents for whom secure confinement is thought necessary.