Mental-competence findings can be made without hearings or contradictory evidence.

Evidence

A particularly significant delegation of authority has taken place in commitments to mental hospitals and in other situations in which mental competence is at issue. Commitments or findings of incompetence often may take place without hearings or, for that matter, any other proceedings in which contradictory evidence might conceivably be presented, simply on the basis of petitions for hospitalization or the reports of physicians. 28 These practices, however modernized or reformed to some degree in recent years, provides insight into the abrogation of discretionary decision-making functions under some circumstances. — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy, 956

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing what ‘modernized or reformed to some degree’ actually changed after the 1960s-70s commitment-reform litigation — the hedge implies the abrogation persists.
• XREF: connects to: Diagnostic tests whose results require expert interpretation are vulnerable to being dismissed as divination — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 1445