Disability Equality as an Ethical Project of Inclusion
Disability rights law evokes notions of empowerment, recognition and inclusion of persons with disabilities. Yet, at this moment, members of the disability community face significant barriers to achieving equality, especially in relation to accessibility and access to justice. Anchored in a deep and rich history of legal decisions and legislative developments, including in areas such as transportation, access to postsecondary education and procedural accommodations, efforts to achieve disability equality in Canada have had varying levels of success. In this lecture, Professor Laverne Jacobs re-orients the discussion, proposing that many governmental efforts to achieve equality would benefit from centering disability equality not simply as a legal right, but also as an ethical project of inclusion.
*This lecture is eligible for 1.5 hours of LSBC CPD credit.
Speaker
Dr. Laverne Jacobs (she/her/elle) is a Full Professor of Law at the University of Windsor in Canada. She is Canada’s first-ever member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. On the UN CRPD Committee, she chairs the Working Group on Communications and Inquiries, is Committee Rapporteur and sits on the Working Group on Women and Girls. Professor Jacobs’ research and scholarship focus on law and disability rights, human rights law, equality law, and administrative law and justice. She is a graduate of McGill University where she completed her BA(Hons) in French literature, LLB. and BCL. She earned her PhD at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. She self-identifies as a Black woman with physical disabilities.
In over 20 years of experience, Professor Jacobs has published and lectured widely in Canada and internationally. Through her research, Dr. Jacobs explores the lived experiences of disabled persons’ engagements with the law with a view to furthering disability equality and inclusion. She is the author of several peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and lead author of the first law and disability textbook in Canada (Law and Disability in Canada (2021)). She is the Founder and Director of The Law, Disability and Social Change Project, a research and public policy centre at Windsor Law. She is also Co-Director of the Disability Rights Working Group of the Berkeley Law Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law.
Professor Jacobs has held public appointments as a tribunal member for the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario and as a member of Ontario’s Accessibility Standards Advisory Council. She has testified, on invitation, as an expert before the Senate of Canada on the negative impact of MAID on disability equality. Dr. Jacobs has received many recognitions for her scholarship and leadership on disability equality, including the Touchstone Award from the Canadian Bar Association and the Hummingbird Award from the Disabled Women’s Network (DaWN) of Canada.
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