Disability Law Issues Covered in CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW

Poverty, as well as the threat of poverty, disproportionately affects people with disabilities. Facing barriers such as unemployment or underemployment and exclusion from school, lacking necessary housing, or being denied access to health care, schools, or transportation, people with disabilities often need legal assistance. To help legal aid attorneys, advocates for people with disabilities, and other antipoverty advocates assist their low-income clients who have disabilities, the Shriver Center devoted its September–October 2007 CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW: JOURNAL OF POVERTY LAW AND POLICY to a special issue entitled Legal Recourse for People with Disabilities.

Through this special issue, the Shriver Center aims to help advocates increase their awareness of the needs of clients with disabilities, identify relevant problems, develop effective legal strategies, gain current information in key substantive law areas, and learn about special considerations involved in representing clients with disabilities. Articles cover affordable housing, eviction defense, medicine and Medicare, Medicaid managed care, public benefits, the Americans with Disabilities Act, disability and work, school discipline, diminished capacity, age and disability, social security changes, protection of exempt benefits, lawsuits against states, immigrant eligibility for benefits, and the Protection and Advocacy network as a resource.

Because people with disabilities are disproportionately poor, legal aid attorneys and antipoverty advocates—regardless of their practice areas—are likely to meet clients or potential clients with disabilities. Attorneys and advocates need to begin to apply a “disability lens” to housing, consumer, health, public benefits, and other legal issues. In his introduction to the special issue, John Bouman, the Shriver Center president, writes: “Advocates have come a long way in advancing the legal rights of people with disabilities. But we all need to think about, as a regular part of our practice, how we can use federal and state disability law—statutory, regulatory, and case law—to improve the lives of our clients. This issue of CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW is offered as a means for legal aid and other antipoverty advocates to develop a fuller understanding of the legal needs of people with disabilities and how to apply disability law in a wider range of cases and more types of advocacy.”

Single copies of the special issue are $30 each for nonprofit entities and $60 each for others. Annual subscription prices are $105 for Legal Services Corporation–funded advocates; $250 for nonprofit entities (including small foundations and law school clinics); $400 for individual private subscribers; and $500 for a site license for law school libraries, law firm libraries, other law libraries, and foundations. The annual subscription price covers six hard-copy issues of CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW and access via www.povertylaw.org to current issues of CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW and all other issues from 1990.

For more information on Legal Recourse for People with Disabilities or on how to subscribe to CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW and other Shriver Center publications, contact Natasha Eziquiel-Shriro at 312.363.3830 ext. 242.