Winter 2000

    Volume 27 No. 1   December 2000

    Introduction - Human Rights Magazine, Winter 2000

    The ADA opened up the private sector in the same way that its counterpart, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, required government entities to provide access to public facilities and programs for people with disabilities.

    Featured

    Disability Rights Today - Human Rights Magazine, Winter 2000

    Writing two years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Jacobus tenBroek, professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley and founding president of the National Federation of the Blind, observed that " . . . nothing could be more essential to personality, social existence, economic opportunity-in short, to individual well-being and integration into the life of the community-than . . . public approval, and the legal right to be abroad in the land" ("The Right to Live in the World: The Disabled in the Law of Torts," 54 Cal. L. Rev. 841 (1966)). When tenBroek penned these words, people with disabilities lacked the protection of a civil rights statute.

    Defining Disability in the Aftermath of Sutton - Human Rights Magazine, Winter 2000

    When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was adopted in 1990, President Bush declared that "every man, woman and child with a disability can pass through once-closed doors into a bright new era of equality, independence and freedom." However, three Supreme Court rulings during the 1998–1999 Term posed new barriers for individuals whose disabilities are mitigated or controlled by medication or devices. Ironically, in its attempt to curb litigation, the Court spawned a whole new generation of litigation on the question of who does or does not fit within the definition of disability.

    Ensuring Access to the Legal System - Human Rights Magazine, Winter 2000

    One of the most crucial issues affecting the disability community relates to children and youth with disabilities and their parents: the lack of adequate access to our legal system. As children and youth with disabilities are denied the free and appropriate public education they are entitled to, their parents face many challenges and obstacles placed by a recalcitrant system of education that has had a long-standing history of not being held accountable.

    Thanks to Two Friends of the Constitution - Human Rights Magazine, Winter 2000

    In the January 2, 2000, New York Times Magazine, Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at the University of New Orleans, wrote a brief tribute to three civil rights figures who died in 1999. He noted the well-deserved praise throughout last year for the generation of American soldiers who fought World War II, but observed that "members of the same generation who led the modern civil rights movement have yet to receive the same treatment, and portrayals of them still often give off a whiff of un- Americanism.