Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780226616605)

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.


Author: Ruth O'Brien
ISBN-10: 0226616606
ISBN-13: 9780226616605
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Language: English
Published: 10/15/2001
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.02w x 0.65d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2002 pg. 1999