Reminder: Disability and Tort Law Proposals Due By August 31

Call for Papers
AALS Section on Disability Law

Disability and Tort Law

The Section on  Disability Law will hold a program during the January,
2011 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, on Disability and
Tort Law.  Disability Law embraces many crucial Tort Law issues, such as
the measure of damages for incapacity and disfigurement, the
reasonable-person standard as applied to people with physical and mental
disabilities, duties of care relative to emotional and physical
injuries, the validity of wrongful life claims, and liability standards
for intentional infliction of emotional distress on people with
disabilities.  Disability Law scholars have made important contributions
to the development of the law on these questions, starting with Jacobus
tenBroek, whose path-breaking article, The Right to Live in the World:
The Disabled in the Law of Torts, 54 Cal. L. Rev. 841 (1966), was
published 45 years ago this year.  Due in no small part to the
intellectual groundwork of tenBroek and others, in the years since his
writing a worldwide disability rights movement has emerged, challenging
conventional assumptions about disability and the role of legal
institutions as they relate to disability.  As tenBroek realized,
disability rights ideas may entail reexamining the goals and operation
of tort law in general and in specific application.  This session asks
scholars chosen through a call for papers to discuss issues of
disability and tort law in an era of disability rights.

The Section on Disability Law seeks proposals for presentations on
disability and tort law for the AALS meeting in San Francisco January,
2011.  Proposals should include an abstract of 500 words or fewer, and
may be accompanied by a working draft if the proposer chooses.  The
section does not plan to publish the papers in a symposium, so
presenters are free to seek publication where they wish, though work
that will not be published before January 2011 will be strongly
preferred..

Deadline for submission is August 31, 2010.  Please email proposals to
Mark Weber at [email protected].  Selections will be made by late
September by the Executive Committee of the Section.  Pursuant to AALS
policy, presenters will have to cover their own travel expenses and
registration fee for the annual meeting, and the Section is prohibited
from reimbursing such expenses.  Under AALS rules, only faculty members
of AALS member and fee-paid law schools are eligible to submit
proposals.  Foreign, visiting and adjunct faculty members, graduate
students, fellows and non-law school faculty are not eligible to submit.

Questions should be directed to Mark Weber, 312-362-8808,
[email protected].

--CJR