Global Disability Cause Lawyering

Adopted by the United Nations in 2006, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has inspired a new generation of lawyers to advance the goals of the disability rights movement before local, national, and international bodies. While many lawyers narrowly advocate for their individual clients’ rights, "cause lawyers" endeavor more strategically to bring cases that will advance systemic CRPD implementation for the broader disability community. Although cause lawyering to advance the human rights of various identity groups or certain thematic cross-cutting issues has been extensively studied, the complex dynamics and considerations that inform disability-specific cause lawyers remain almost unexplored.

This event, co-organized by HPOD and the Center for the Legal Profession (CLP), presented a window into these dynamics by describing the efforts of litigants around the world to advance protections of persons with disabilities’ rights in international and local fora. The event will be introduced by HPOD's Executive Director Michael Ashley Stein and CLP's Executive Director David B. Wilkins, who co-authored "Disability Cause Lawyers," one of the few scholarly studies of disability cause lawyering.

The event also featured as panelists the following leading disability cause lawyers:

• María Soledad Cisternas Reyes, United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy on Disability and Accessibility;
• Janos Fiala-Butora of the National University of Ireland Galway’s Centre for Disability Law and Policy;
• Sanjay Jain of the ILS Law College in Pune, India; and
• Elizabeth Kamundia of Kenya's National Commission on Human Rights.

HPOD and CLP expanded on this event in an accompanying thematic issue of The Practice released on May 24, 2022, featuring contributions from both these panelists and other disability cause lawyers.