Disability Law as an Academic Discipline: Towards Cohesion and Mainstreaming?
| Author | ANNA LAWSON |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12258 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 47, NUMBER 4, NOVEMBER 2020
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 558–87
Disability Law as an Academic Discipline: Towards Cohesion
and Mainstreaming?
ANNA LAWSON∗
This article calls for a strengthening of Disability Law as an academic
discipline and offers orientation for its futuredevelopment. It argues that
there is a need for enhanced cohesion among those already applying a
critical disability perspective within disciplines such as Equality Law,
Mental Health and Capacity Law, and Social Care and Protection
Law and also for greater mainstreaming of this approach across the
full breadth of sociolegal scholarship. The article is divided into three
main sections. The first contextualizes Disability Law by reflecting
on its relationship with other legal disciplines and broader pools of
scholarship. The second focuses on issues of scope and structure. The
third offers orientation for future Disability Law work by outlining four
key cross-cutting challengeswith the potential to bring together scholars
with expertise in different areas of substantive law.
I. INTRODUCTION
This article makes a case for the strengthening of Disability Law as an
academic discipline. It does so not in order to keep Disability Law discrete
and separate from other legal disciplines, but as a means by which to dissolve
barriers that too often divide scholars applying disability critique to different
areas of substantive law, and to enhance the flow of such critique into areas
of legal scholarship that it has been slow to permeate. It is a call to action
that urges sociolegal scholars to interrogate the relationship between law and
∗School of Law, University of Leeds, The Liberty Building, Leeds, LS2 9JT,
England
lawamml@leeds.ac.uk A.M.M.Lawson@leeds.ac.uk
With heartfelt thanks to Michael Thomson for insightful guidance and support; Alastair
Mullis for persuading me of the need for this piece; Beverley Clough, Luke Clements, Jen
Hendry, Alex Green, and other colleagues at the Centre for Disability Studies and Centre
for Law and Social Justice for thoughtful comments; David Newmanand Rachael Thomas
for invaluable practical assistance; and the anonymous reviewers and editors for guidance
that has significantly improved this article.
558
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License,
which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited, the use is non-commercial
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© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Law and Society published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd on behalf of Cardiff University (CU).
disablement, challenge ableism, and contribute to the development of law
and justice systems that are inclusive of people regardless of their ascribed
‘impairment’ or body/mind difference.
Disability Law is centrally concerned with, and defined by, questions about
law’s role in creating, perpetuating, resisting, and contesting disablement
– important questions with profound implications for social justice. In
accordance with a social model approach to disability (discussed more fully
below),1disablement is understood here as the process by which social
structures and systems operate to disadvantage, exclude, and marginalize
disabled people – people with ascribed impairments (or body/mind
differences) that deviate from generally accepted ‘ability’ norms of physical,
sensory, cognitive, neurological, or emotional functionality. ‘Disability’ is
understood as the resulting disadvantage or oppression. The term ‘disabled
people’ will be used to refer to people with ascribed impairments who
experience disablement, and terms such as ‘impairment’ or ‘trait’ (rather than
‘disability’) will be used to refer to the body/mind characteristics of those
individuals. The phrase ‘persons with disabilities’ will be used only where
context so requires.2
Law and the justice system, like other social systems and practices, operate
in disabling ways to instantiate and underpin disadvantage experienced by
people with ascribed impairments. Conversely, they also provide mechanisms
through which disabling practices and structures can be challenged.3
Disability Law is concerned with both these issues, entailing a critical
approach to law’s engagement with disability and disablement.
As a relatively young discipline, Disability Law is continuing to emerge
and take shape. Dating back to the 1990s, it has rapidly become globalized4
– a trend accelerated by developments in international law and policy
such as the adoption of the United Nations (UN) Standard Rules on the
Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities in 19935and the
adoption, in 2006, of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with
Disabilities (CRPD).6From its inception, it has looked beyond traditional
1 Below,nn. 11–22 and accompanying text.
2 This terminology is favoured by proponents of ‘people-first language’, however, and
appears in international instruments including the UN Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities.
3 See further A. Lawson and M. Priestley, ‘The Social Model of Disability: Questions
for Law and Legal Scholarship?’ in Routledge Handbook of Disability Law and
Human Rights, eds P. Blanck and E. Flynn (2017) 3.
4 A. Kanter, ‘The Globalization of Disability Rights Law’ (2003) 30 Syracuse J. of
International Law and Commerce 241.
5 UN Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities,
GA Res 48/96, UN GAOR, 48th Sess, Supp No 49, Annex at 202-11, UN Doc
A/Res/48/49 (1994). This followed the UN Decade of Disabled Persons1983–1993 –
GA Res 37/52, UN GAOR, 37th Sess, Supp No 51, at 185, UN Doc A/37/51 (1983).
6 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), A/RES/61/106,
61st item 76.67(b), 13 December 2006.
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© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Law and Society published by John Wiley& Sons Ltd on behalf of Cardiff University(CU).
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