Reweighing Medical Civil Rights

13 Pages Posted: 28 Jul 2020 Last revised: 19 Oct 2020

See all articles by Rabia Belt

Rabia Belt

Stanford Law School

Doron Dorfman

Seton Hall Law School

Date Written: June 28, 2020

Abstract

Civil rights law is at a crossroads. It’s tough to find vindication for injustice claims in the courts. Scholars and advocates are looking elsewhere for legal paradigms that will help provide relief. Disability law is one of the possibilities.

Disability law seems seductive. Despite the general parsimoniousness of U.S. welfare benefits, disabled people can receive tax breaks, financial payments, and health care. Disability accommodations and modifications oblige employers, government programs, and purveyors of public accommodations to provide remedies to the mismatch between people’s disabilities and their services and programs. Disabled people may escape the weight of victim-blaming and fault attributed to others who ask for recognition and benefits from the government and from law. Social science research has found that in industrialized Western countries, people with disabilities are considered highly deserving of social protection (an identity category second only to that of older people).

Craig Konnoth’s Article, using “medical civil rights” as an angle onto disability, captures the ostensible benefits of disability legal claiming. His Article provides voluminous coverage of examples of individuals and communities framing their grievances and difficulties in medical terms within the law. He also charts out how this strategy may offer benefits that other non-medical framing does not. We partially agree with him on this, but we also believe that he does not fully account for the weight on the other side of the negative aspects of medical framing. The remainder of our Response notes some of these negative aspects.

Our Response unfolds as follows. We first discuss the benefits and recognition granted to medicalized individuals. We then contextualize these benefits by noting the drawbacks to medicalization. Finally, we conclude by proposing a new way forward for disability justice.

Suggested Citation

Belt, Rabia and Dorfman, Doron, Reweighing Medical Civil Rights (June 28, 2020). 72 Stanford Law Review Online 176 (2020), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3637206

Rabia Belt (Contact Author)

Stanford Law School ( email )

Stanford Law School
Palo Alto, CA California 94304
United States
7343087252 (Phone)

Doron Dorfman

Seton Hall Law School ( email )

One Newark Center
Newark, NJ 07102-5210
United States

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