Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace

by Ruth O'Brien

Crippled Justice , the first comprehensive intellectual history of disability policy in the workplace from World War II to the present, explains why American employers and judges, despite the Americans with Disabilities Act, have been so resistant to accommodating the disabled in the workplace. Ruth O'Brien traces the origins of this resistance to the postwar disability policies inspired by physicians and psychoanalysts that were based on the notion that disabled people should accommodate society rather than having society accommodate them.

O'Brien shows how the remnants of postwar cultural values bogged down the rights-oriented policy in the 1970s and how they continue to permeate judicial interpretations of provisions under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In effect, O'Brien argues, these decisions have created a lose/lose situation for the very people the act was meant to protect. Covering developments up to the present, Crippled Justice is an eye-opening story of government officials and influential experts, and how our legislative and judicial institutions have responded to them.

Genres: Disability, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2001

Reviews

[Riley Sutherland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really love the way O'Brien argues disability history IS labor history—especially when she insists that accommodation requests are the ultimate workplace negotiation tool, and perhaps the only one available to workers as individuals rather than collective units. "When employers realized that disability rights" could subvert capitalist work structures, the Supreme Court started interpreting laws like the ADA as limitedly as possible. 10/10 recommend, will never see my accommodation requests the same way again.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

The beginning of this book is very informative, but the last half is outdated; the author stops prior to the ADA Amendments Act.