The Disability Docket

Join Professors Jasmine Harris and Karen Tani to discuss their pathbreaking paper, The Disability Docket, applying a “disability lens” to the Supreme Court’s 2021 and 2022 Terms (co-written with Shira Wakschlag (the Arc)). Professors Harris and Tani argue that disability law, as well as disability advocacy, can provide critical perspectives to ongoing debates about inclusion and resource distribution. Tracing both disability-related disputes as well as non-disability cases with disproportionate impact on people with disabilities, the article articulates the Supreme Court’s broader agenda through a disability lens to further and protect civil rights more generally.

Jasmine E. Harris is a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School with a secondary appointment at the Penn Graduate School of Education. She is a leading law and inequality scholar with expertise in disability law, antidiscrimination law, and evidence as well as a frequent contributor in publications and media outlets as the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Magazine, Washington Post, TIME Magazine, Bloomberg, and National Public Radio. Professor Harris holds a BA from Dartmouth College and a JD from Yale Law School. She clerked for Harold Baer, Jr., United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York, practiced complex commercial litigation at WilmerHale, and practiced public interest law at the Advancement Project. Harris serves as an executive board member of The Arc of the United States where she chairs the organization’s Legal Advocacy Committee.

Karen Tani is the Seaman Family University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the history department. She is the author of States of Dependency: Welfare, Rights, and American Governance, 1935-1972 (Cambridge University Press, 2016). Her published articles have appeared or are forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, Yale Law Journal, Law and History Review, Disability Studies Quarterly, and other outlets. Her current book project is titled “Costed Out: Disabled Citizens and American Governance in the Late Twentieth Century.” She holds a JD and a PhD in History from the University of Pennsylvania.