About the book (from the Preface)
Since the publication of the first edition, Dr. Wolfensberger developed extensive material and taught widely on the limits of a law- and legal rights-based approach to addressing human needs.
His teaching came to emphasize more and more that the foundations for an adaptive, or even merely a functional, service system were in the minds, hearts, and values of the members of a society; and that so often, recourse to the law was either an attempt to bypass the long and difficult work of persuading the citizenry to adopt certain attitudes and values, or a de facto declaration that such an attempt at persuasion would fail.
However, this does not mean that recourse to the law is to be totally rejected, only that its limitations must be understood, and it must be put and kept in its proper place. This version has been expanded from the original 24 page version to 83 pages.