Law and Disability

AuthorKatharina Heyer
Pages322-336
The Handbook of Law and Society, First Edition. Edited by Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2015 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Introduction
This chapter examines “disability” as a legal category and as an innovative site of
analysis for socio‐legal research. It outlines approaches to defining disability and
discrimination, focusing on the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act. The ADA was
the world’s first comprehensive disability antidiscrimination law rejecting the
traditional medicalized views of disabilities in favor of a civil rights approach. The
move from a medical to a social model of disability has revolutionized disability law,
especially in the ways that it prohibits discrimination in employment, education,
and public access. Framing disability as a civil rights issue and making analogies
with other theories of oppression have provided both a political and a legal
foundation for the ADA, and simultaneously challenged traditional approaches to
civil rights law and policy in the United States. The chapter follows the global spread
of rights‐based disability through national and international instruments that
challenge traditional notions of disability equality and participation. It concludes
with innovative approaches to disability research in the academy, focusing on the
development of disability legal studies.
The Paradigm Shift in Disability Law and Policy
Traditional approaches to disability law and policy defined disability as a medical
issue that focused primarily on impairments of mobility, vision, or hearing. People
with disabilities were considered damaged, flawed, and in need of charity or
government assistance. The appropriate policy response to the disability “problem”
Law and Disability
Katharina Heyer
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