Matthew “Hezzy” Smith, Esq. is a trilingual attorney, a proud sibling, and Director of Advocacy Initiatives. He’s responsible for much of HPOD’s self-advocacy programming. He has worked closely with self-advocacy and disabled peoples’ organizations both in the United States and abroad to advocate, research, and produce awareness-raising materials. His Spanish, English, and Bangla language materials have shaped disability rights strategic litigation and important decisions by national and regional courts, and his disability rights scholarship has appeared in collections published by Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press, as well as both U.S. and international law reviews.
Representative publications:
- When Does Mental Health Coercion Constitute Torture?: Implications of Unpublished U.S. Immigration Judge Decisions Denying Non-Refoulement Protection, 45 Fordham International Law Journal 781 (2022) (with Michael Ashley Stein).
- Transfer of Parental Rights: The Impact of Section 615(M) of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, 13 Drexel Law Review 987 (2022) (with Michael Ashley Stein).
- Mobilizing Disabled Peoples’ Organizations to Implement Bangladesh’s Disability Law, 13 Journal of Human Rights Practice 433 (2022) (with Md. Rejaul Karim Siddiquee, Michael Ashley Stein, & Janet E. Lord).
- Lessons from United States school district policies and approaches to special education during the COVID-19 pandemic, International Journal of Inclusive Education (2022) (with Melissa E. Mendoza, Timothy F. Brewer, Michael Ashley Stein, & S. Jody Heymann).
- Connecting the Right of Collective Legal Capacity by Indigenous Peoples with the Right of Individual Legal Capacity by Persons with Disabilities, 9 International Human Rights Law Review 147 (2020) (with Michael Ashley Stein).
- Combating the Exclusion and Marginalisation of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities in Higher Education in the United States, in A Better Future: The Role of Higher Education for Displaced and Marginalised People (Jacqueline Bhabha, Wenona Giles, & Faraaz Mahomed eds., 2020) (with Michael Ashley Stein).
- Sexual Agency As a Rights-Based Imperative for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities, in Disability Health, Law, & Bioethics (I. Glenn Cohen, Carmel Shachar, Anita Silvers, & Michael Ashley Stein eds., 2020) (with Tara Allison & Michael Ashley Stein).