76010 Disability and the Law

This subject explores disability and impairment as a legal category. Students are introduced to the various competing models of disability including the medical model, the social construction model, the human rights model, and bioethical, feminist and postmodern approaches to disability. In so doing, the subject takes an interdisciplinary and international comparative approach to concepts and theories of disability and impairment.

Students examine the practical implications of these models for the construction of legal rights and responsibilities with respect to persons with disabilities in a number of key areas of law. These include health law, tort law, criminal law, international law and anti-discrimination law. Specific issues examined include treatment-limiting decisions for newborns, constraints on reproductive decision-making, abortion for disability, end of life decision-making, the therapy/enhancement distinction and body modification, the UN Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Disabled Persons and various state and federal anti-discrimination legislation.

Key issues that students examine are the concepts of normal and disabled, healthy and diseased, and able-bodied and impaired. This subject examines and evaluates how law can best achieve the goals of social justice and equality for individuals with disabilities.