Join us for a panel discussion on the accomplishments, missed opportunities, and future developments relating to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA is a comprehensive antidiscrimination statute that was regarded by the disability community as an “emancipation proclamation” for one of America’s largest minority groups when it was first enacted in 1990. The ADA has also had an international influence that has moved beyond the US and affected the lives of people with disabilities around the world. Nevertheless, there is still much to be done to ensure the inclusion of people with disabilities in many aspects of life, including higher education, employment, and family life. A panel of scholars in Disability Legal Studies and Disability Studies will discuss issues related to the past, present, and future of the ADA and will apply Disability Studies concepts to the analysis of law and its influence on the disability community in particular and on society in general.

To RSVP, go to: http://goo.gl/forms/heLbWshSiG

Participants:

Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Department of English, Emory University, GA

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson is Professor of English at Emory University, where her fields of study are disability studies, American literature and culture, feminist theory, and bioethics. Her work develops the field of critical disability studies in the health humanities, broadly understood, to bring forward disability access, inclusion, and identity to communities inside and outside of the academy. She is the author of Staring: How We Look and several other books. Her current book project is Habitable Worlds: Disability, Technology, and Eugenics.

Sagit Mor, University of Haifa Faculty of Law, Israel; University of Washington, WA

Sagit Mor is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Haifa Faculty of Law, Israel. She is an Israel Institute Teaching Fellow visiting the University of Washington for the 2015-2016 academic year. Following the completion of her doctoral studies at New York University School of Law, she was an Ed Roberts postdoctoral fellow in disability studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation won the Association for the Study of Law Culture and the Humanities 2007 Dissertation Award. Mor is the co-founder of the Collaborative Research Network of Disability Legal Studies at the Law and Society Association (LSA) and of IDSN, the Israeli Disability Studies Network, and is the Director of the Law and Health LL.M. Program at the Haifa Faculty of Law. Mor’s areas of interest include disability critique of law, law and society, law and social change, torts, bioethics, and health law. Her publications examine social, legal, and historical aspects of disability rights, social welfare policy, employment discrimination, the right to access, access to justice, prenatal screening wrongful life claims, and intersex surgeries. Her current research focuses on disability and torts.

Rabia Belt, Stanford Law School

Rabia Belt is a legal historian whose scholarship focuses on broad and diverse issues including 19th and 20th century U.S. History, Disability History, Legal History, Law of Democracy, History of Suffrage, African American History, American Indian History, and Gender History. A legal history scholar, her work has garnered praise. In 2015 the American Society of Legal History named her a Kathryn T. Preyer Scholar for her paper  “Ballots for Bullets? The Disenfranchisement of Civil War Veterans.” She joins the Stanford Law Faculty in 2015 first as an academic fellow while finishing her dissertation, currently titled “Disabling Democracy in America: Disability, Citizenship, Suffrage, and the Law, 1830-1920.” She will take up her position as assistant professor at Stanford Law in the next academic year. Prior to joining the Stanford Law faculty, she was a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

Moderated by: Doron Dorfman, JSD candidate, Stanford Law School

Doron Dorfman had been a practicing attorney in Israeli law firms and NGOs for four years before completing his JSM (Masters in Law) and continuing as a JSD (equivalent of a PhD in Law) candidate at Stanford Law School. His empirical research is in the intersection of Disability Studies and Law, as well as Civil and Administrative Procedures, Legal Ethics, Alternative Dispute Resolution and Law & Identity. His award-winning scholarship has been published in such journals as Law & Social Inquiry and Columbia Journal of Gender & Law. Doron’s dissertation examines popular perceptions of misuse of law by people claiming disabilities and abuse of process in U.S. disability rights litigation.