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Full-Text Articles in Law
How The Biological/Social Divide Limits Disability And Equality, Martha T. Mccluskey
How The Biological/Social Divide Limits Disability And Equality, Martha T. Mccluskey
Journal Articles
What is disability - a biological or social condition? In the conventional equality frameworks, the division between biology and social identity puts disability at the bottom of the formal equality hierarchy, but at the top of the substantive equality hierarchy. Compared with race and then gender, disability deserves the least protection against formal discrimination, on the theory that disadvantages are based on real and relevant functional differences more than on suspect social judgments. But turning to substantive equality, disability’s supposed greater biological basis justifies affirmative accommodation of difference, compared to the social differences of race, with gender in the middle …
Restoring The Ada And Beyond: Disability In The 21st Century, Robert L. Burgdorf
Restoring The Ada And Beyond: Disability In The 21st Century, Robert L. Burgdorf
Journal Articles
Perhaps it was imprudent for me to agree, in response to the request of the symposium organizers, to address the future of disability law. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Neils Bohr supposedly once said that "[p]rediction is very difficult, especially about the future."' Columnist and author Jim Bishop wrote, "The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face." 2 Prognosticating is a very tricky and uncertain undertaking. I cannot pretend to have any particular gift for crystal ball gazing in disability matters. When I joined the …
"Substantially Limited" Protection From Disability Discrimination: The Special Treatment Model And Misconstructions Of The Definition Of Disability, Robert Burgdorf
"Substantially Limited" Protection From Disability Discrimination: The Special Treatment Model And Misconstructions Of The Definition Of Disability, Robert Burgdorf
Journal Articles
DISABILITY' nondiscrimination laws, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA),2 and the disability rights movement which spawned them have, at their core, a central premise that is both simple and profound. That premise is that people denominated as "disabled" are just people, not different in any critical way from other people. Paradoxically, commentators, enforcement agencies and the courts, with manifest good intentions, have frequently interpreted and applied these laws in ways that reinforce a diametrically opposite premise-that people with disabilities are significantly different, special and need exceptional status and protection, One is reminded of Justice Brandeis's admonition …