Law Commons^™

Disabling Complexity: The Americans With Disabilities Act Of 1990 And Its Interaction With Other Federal Laws, Tory L. Lucas

Tory L. Lucas

Given the daunting breadth, depth, and sheer volume of federal legislation impacting the labor and employment arena, the task of understanding how all of the federal legislation - not to mention state and local legislation and all corresponding regulations and caselaw - interrelates may be an impossible task even for legal experts. One vital area of federal employment legislation involves protecting the rights of individuals with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (“ADA”) seeks “to provide a clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities.” To fulfill the ADA's vision to protect …

Painful Disparities, Painful Realities, Amanda C. Pustilnik

Amanda C Pustilnik

Legal doctrines and decisional norms treat chronic claims pain differently than other kinds of disability or damages claims because of bias and confusion about whether chronic pain is real. This is law’s painful disparity. Now, breakthrough neuroimaging can make pain visible, shedding light on these mysterious ills. Neuroimaging shows these conditions are, as sufferers have known all along, painfully real. This Article is about where law ought to change because of innovations in structural and functional imaging of the brain in pain. It describes cutting-edge scientific developments and the impact they should make on evidence law and disability law, and, …

Unfulfilled Promise: Mental Disability Voting Rights And The Halving Of Hava’S Potential, Benjamin Hoerner

Benjamin O Hoerner

In 2012, the heated presidential election between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney reanimated the debate surrounding the voting rights of mentally disabled citizens in the United States. A decade earlier, in October 2002, President George W. Bush signed into law the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), aiming to protect the voting rights of the country’s disabled population. At the time of its enactment, legislators and commentators lauded HAVA as “the most important voting rights bill since the passing of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.” However, since its passage, HAVA has been subjected to a flurry of …

Decisions And Appeals In Irish Social Welfare Law: Recent Case Law, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

Home Sweet Home???: Fixing Group Homes For Human Beings Who Have Special Needs, Erik N. Weber

Erik N Weber

When I was five years old, doctors who evaluated me for my autism told my parents to put me in an institution for the rest of my life. The doctors saw no hope; they just saw me as something to be warehoused. My parents did put me in an institution, which was college. My lifelong pursuit to help others with special needs to be treated with dignity began when I went with a Christmas Carol choir to sing Carols at a state hospital (“institution”). I saw patients strapped to chairs; they were lethargic, drooling, and no staff were in the …

Presumed Incompetent: Continuing The Conversation (Part I), Carmen G. Gonzalez, Angela P. Harris

Carmen G. Gonzalez

On March 8, 2013, the Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice hosted an all-day symposium featuring more than forty speakers at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law to celebrate and invite responses to the book entitled, Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia (Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Yolanda Flores Niemann, Carmen G. González & Angela P. Harris eds., 2012). Presumed Incompetent presents gripping first-hand accounts of the obstacles encountered by female faculty of color in the academic workplace, and provides specific recommendations to women of color, allies, and academic leaders on ways …

Surrogacy Leave And Eu Law: Case C 167/12, C.D. V S.T. And Case C 363/12, Z. V A Government Department, Judgements (Grand Chamber) Of 18 March 2014, Mel Cousins

Mel Cousins

Advances in reproductive technology have tended to outpace the capacity of legislators to respond to these changes, leading to difficult legal questions for the courts. Surrogacy is one particular area where advances in technology have led to many legal challenges and have highlighted the failure (in several jurisdictions) to enact appropriate legislation in response to technological developments and/or differing views about what is ‘appropriate’. Two recent cases before the European Court of Justice (CJEU) have raised the issues as to whether either EU secondary legislation (in particular the Pregnant Workers Directive 92/85/EEC and/or the Equal Treatment Directives 2006/54/EC and 2000/78/EC) …