Mental disabilities under the ADA: a management rights approach

While numerous sources have focused on employee rights and employer obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, this article will emphasize employer rights with respect to mental disabilities under the ADA. Specifically, it addresses the ADA's definition of "mental disability," the right of employers to screen job applicants in spite of the ADA, the conditions under which an employer may require an employee to undergo a "fitness for duty" examination, and the limits of the duty to "reasonably accommodate" an employee with a mental disability.     

Does the federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 create a hole in ERISA preemption?

ERISA's board preemption provision has survived many challenges to its scope and effect. Now it may have succumbed in the face of a few statements tucked into the legislative history of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). Language in the legislative history presents the view that the Act was meant to overturn ERISA preemption of state family and medical leave laws. The text of the FMLA contains no corroborating language to support that view. However, at least one court found the statements in the legislative history to be persuasive and ruled that under the FMLA, ERISA does not preempt state family and medical leave laws that regulate ERISA plans. If other courts follow that decision, there will be great implications to employee benefit plan regulation and administration. This article explores the court's decision and the relationship between the FMLA and ERISA preemption.     

Book reviews

Robert Service, Lenin: A Political Life. Vol. 3: The Iron Ring. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1995, xxi + 393 pp., £45.00.

Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization. London: University of California Press, 1995, xxv + 639 pp., £45.00.

Yilmaz Akyüz, Detlef Kotte, Andràs Köves & László Szamuely (eds), Privatization in the Transition Process. Recent Experiences in Eastern Europe. Geneva: United Nations, 1994, x + 418 pp.

Jerzy Hausner, Bob Jessop & Klaus Nielsen (eds), Strategic Choice and Path‐dependency in Post‐Socialism. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1995, xiii + 330 pp. £49.95.

Wladimir Andreff (ed.), Le Secteur Public à I'Est. Restmcturation Industrielle et Financière. Paris: L'Harmattan, Collection ‘Pays de I'Est’, 1995, 238 pp.

Jonathan Klavens & Anthony Zamparutti, Foreign Direct Investments and Environment in Central and Eastern Europe: A Survey. Washington DC: The World Bank, 1995. x + 44 pp., $7.95.

Valdas Samonis, Foreign Investment in the East. New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1995, 77 pp., £22.50.

Taras Kuzio, Ukrainian Security Policy. Washington DC: Praeger, 1995, xiv + 168 pp., £13.50.

Anssi Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish‐Russian Border. Chichester: John Wiley, 1996. xxi + 353 pp., £45.00.

Tuomo Polvinen, Imperial Borderland, Bobrikov and the Attempted Russification of Finland, 1898–1904. London: Hurst, 1995, x + 342 pp. £32.50.

Hugh Poulton, Who are the Macedonians? London: Hurst, 1995, xvii + 218 pp., £12.50.

Jacob M. Landau, Pan‐Turkism. From Irredentism to Cooperation. London: Hurst, 1995, viii + 275 pp., £14.95.

Kenneth Lieberthal, Governing China: From Revolution through Reform. New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc., 1995, xxii + 498 pp., £22.00.

Robert Benewick & Paul Wingrove (eds), China in the 1990s., Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995, x + 272 pp., £11.99.

A. James Gregor, Marxism, China and Development. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1995, xi + 283 pp., £34.95.

David G. Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1995, xxviii + 602 pp., $50.00.

Janet W. Salaff, Working Daughters of Hong Kong: Filial Piety or Power in the Family. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995, xxxvi + 317 pp., $17.50.

Irene Bloom (ed.), Knowledge Painfully Acquired. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996, ix + 226 pp., £14.95.

Walter Laqueur, The Dream that Failed: Reflections on the Soviet Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, ix + 231 pp., £18.99.

David Iosifovich Ortenberg. Stalin, Shcherbakov, Mekhlis, i drugie. Moscow: MP ‘Kodeks’, Ob"edinennaya redaktsiya MVD Rossii, 1995, 208 pp.

Lewis H. Siegelbaum & Ronald Grigor Suny (eds), Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class and Identity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994, xiii + 399 pp., £41.50 h/b, £16.50 p/b.

Walter S. Dunn, Jr, The Soviet Economy and the Red Army, 1930–1945. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1995, ix + 256 pp., £53.95.

A. J. Heywood & I. D. C. Button, Russian Locomotive Types, The Union Legacy. Malmo: Frank Stenvalls Forlag, 1995, vi + 175 pp. Obtainable in UK from Luddenden Press, 19 Goitside, Booth, Halifax HX2 6SY, £14.45.

George Orwell, Animal Farm. London: Seeker and Warburg 1995, 180 pp.