Sky
Roughly 1.3 million adults in the United States are under conservatorships like Britney Spears.
Guardianship is justified as a way to protect its subjects, but can be extremely difficult to get out of.
To protect human rights and dignity, courts should not impose guardianship unless it is an absolute last resort.
Rebekah Diller and Leslie Salzman are clinical professors of law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, where they are co-directors of the Bet Tzedek Civil Litigation Clinic.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the authors.
It's hard to walk away from "Framing Britney Spears," the new documentary chronicling the pop star's lengthy legal conservatorship, without serious questions. How could the law bar a grown woman with hit albums, concert tours, and industry awards from acting on her own behalf for well over a decade? And if someone with Britney Spears' money, fame, and relative youth has remained under a conservatorship for this period of time, what does that say about the system as a whole?