Course Details

This class focuses on the large issues of doctrine, theory, and policy that disabled persons and disability rights law raise in employment, government services, public accommodations, health care, housing, and education. We will address key theoretical and policy questions, as well as remedies under the Americans with Disabilities Act (As Amended), the Rehabilitation Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, in light of recent Supreme Court decisions, as well as recent judicial and regulatory developments relating to deinstitutionalization. The class will survey the history of the disability rights movement, and trace the development of legal and social thinking about disability and disabled persons, from frameworks of affliction, to charity/medicalization, through civil rights, human variation, and contemporary intersectional and critical disability theories.

Outcomes: Students will be able to express, orally and in writing, how the development of US law regarding disabled persons reflects evolving understandings of disability; Students will be able to evaluate critically (positively and negatively), orally and in writing, selected major contemporary legal developments affecting the life prospects of disabled persons.