Disability Law Commons^™

Caring For Humanity: Non-Profit Elderly Law, Sierra Samp

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This Capstone was an internship that focused on care in Humanity at Legal Services for Seniors. There is a journal that includes the observations of care in the law office. I focus on how attorneys care for each clients humanness while they are working on their cases. Attorneys may be doing work that can be quite intimidating, but the care they give is quite extraordinary.

Human Rights And Disability, Lowell Ewert

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In every context where racism, poverty, inequality, religious intolerance, or any other form of exploitation is present, persons with disabilities within the category experiencing discrimination are almost always worse off than their non-disabled peers. In this way, disability has the practical impact of magnifying discrimination and multiplying harmful practices. There is even evidence in some places that persons with disabilities have been deliberately targeted with violence. Additionally, sexual violence against disabled women and girls can be especially cruel.

Efforts to combat discriminatory practices that are primarily focused on addressing the concerns of the able-bodied often further exacerbate the general indifference …

The Disability Politics Of Abortion, Mary Ziegler

Utah Law Review

With Ohio considering passing the nation’s second ban on abortions motivated by Down Syndrome, the relationship between abortion and disability law has taken on new importance. Disability based bans raise unique legal, moral, and political difficulties for those supporting legal abortion. The core commitments supporting legal abortion—including sex equality—stand in some tension with justifying abortion in the case of a fetal defect or disability.

Given the problems with disability-based bans, it may seem that there is no urgent need to resolve these tensions. Disability-based statutes likely create an impermissible undue burden under Planned Parenthood of Southeastern v. Casey and seem …

An Empirical Assessment Of Georgia’S Beyond A Reasonable Doubt Standard To Determine Intellectual Disability In Capital Cases, Lauren Sudeall Lucas

Georgia State University Law Review

In Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court held that execution of people with intellectual disabilities violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In doing so, the Court explicitly left to the states the question of which procedures would be used to identify such defendants as exempt from the death penalty. More than a decade before Atkins, Georgia was the first state to bar execution of people with intellectual disability. Yet, of the states that continue to impose the death penalty as a punishment for capital murder, Georgia is the only state that requires capital defendants …

Disability Rights In The Age Of Uber: Applying The Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990 To Transportation Network Companies, Rachel Reed

Georgia State University Law Review

Within the past year, individual plaintiffs and disability rights organizations have initiated a number of lawsuits against Uber, and similar companies like Lyft, alleging violations of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (Title III). In each of these cases, the plaintiffs’ success turns on affirmatively answering one significant threshold question: Whether Uber, or a similar entity, falls within the scope of Title III. Traditional taxi companies fall squarely within the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990’s (ADA) coverage under 42 U.S.C. § 12184 (§ 12184), which governs private companies that provide transportation services. Given the similarities …

God Said To Abraham/Kill Me A Son: Why The Insanity Defense And The Incompetency Status Are Compatible With And Required By The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities And Basic Principles Of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Michael L. Perlin

Articles & Chapters

Interpretations of the General Comments to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) — that command the abolition of the insanity defense and the incompetency status — make no theoretical or conceptual sense, disregard the history of how society has treated persons with serious mental disabilities who are charged with crime, and will lead to predictable torture of this population in prison, at the hands of both prison guards and other prisoners. Such interpretation also flies in the face of every precept of therapeutic jurisprudence. Support of this position exhibits a startling lack of understanding of the …