UA Law School to Host National Symposium on Disability Law

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The University of Alabama School of Law will host “Disability Law: Equality and Difference: A Symposium on American Disability Law and the Civil Rights Model” on Friday, Nov. 7, at 9 a.m. at the Law School.

“Disability Law: Equality and Difference” will examine this conceptual paradox in American disability law. A distinguished panel of disability law scholars, practitioners, and representatives of related fields from institutions such as Harvard, Duke, North Carolina, Florida and UA will comment on the implications of the disability laws’ desire to promote equality of opportunity and the simultaneous recognition of difference that is inherent in a system of accommodations. The luncheon speaker will be Harriet McBryde Johnson, an attorney and disability rights advocate who was featured earlier this year in a cover story in the New York Times Magazine.

The “Equality and Difference” symposium will be the UA School of Law’s third conference on disability law. In March 2000 the Law School hosted a national conference on the 10-year anniversary of the ADA, and in October 2001 sponsored a symposium on the Supreme Court’s decision in Board of Trustees of The University of Alabama v. Garrett. Papers from these symposia were published in special editions of the Alabama Law Review.

For further information, contact Peggy McIntosh at 205/348-5927, Reuben Cook at 205/348-9710, or see www.law.ua.edu/equality.