Book aims to guide lawyers and professionals working with people with disabilities
Laverne Jacobs, professor at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law, has served as general editor for Law and Disability in Canada: Cases and Materials, a comprehensive overview of persons with disabilities and their interactions with the law.
The text published by LexisNexis Canada aims to discuss, through an intersectional lens, disability barriers in the areas of labour and employment law, criminal law, constitutional law and human rights law, among others, according to Windsor Law’s news release. It also explores topics like women and girls with disabilities, community living and social benefits.
Aside from Jacobs, other authors of the text included Ruby Dhand, associate professor at Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law; David Ireland, associate professor at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law; Richard Jochelson, dean and professor at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law; Freya Kodar, associate professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law; and Odelia Bay, a PhD candidate at Osgoode Hall Law School. Brayden McDonald, an LLM candidate at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Law, was a contributor.
According to information from the LexisNexis online store, the book’s first part talks about the tensions in community living, workplace accommodation, income security and disability benefits and considers ways to attain equality for persons with disabilities in everyday settings.
The second part covers mental health and specialized courts, arrests, detention, trials, sentencing, inquests and other specific legal contexts where disability issues have not been explored enough. It also focuses on disability issues impacting women, Indigenous peoples and others from marginalized groups. The book then touches upon problems experienced by people with disabilities amid the COVID-19 pandemic and includes bibliographies regarding disability and access-to-justice topics.
The book seeks to guide lawyers working on human rights and disability cases, law professors and law students taking courses covering law and disability. It may also benefit human resource professionals and social workers dealing with disability issues, as well as disability studies students.
At Windsor Law, Jacobs has been founding director of the Law, Disability and Social Change Project, a research and public advocacy initiative aiming to foster and to develop inclusive communities. She has also been co-director of the Disability Rights Working Group at the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality and Anti-Discrimination Law and Canada’s nominee for the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, named last June.
Her areas of teaching and research include law and disability, equality, human rights, access to information, access to administrative justice, administrative law and theory and qualitative empirical research methodology. She received her LLB and BCL from McGill University in 1999 and her PhD from Osgoode Hall Law School in 2009.
