[blindLaw] International Summit on Legal Professionals with Disabilities - It Can Be Done

[Rahul Bajaj]

“There exists a wide gap between what lawyers with disabilities, when
provided the appropriate resources and tools, are capable of
achieving, and what they are actually able to achieve, owing to the
numerous obstacles placed on their path.” - Laura Wolk, Law Clerk to
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“To the seniors who are good enough to accept lawyers with
disabilities, I would only say this: For most of us, as a lawyer, the
fact that you are the protector of rights is the foundational reason
for you entering this profession. If a lawyer with a disability comes
to a senior, his case must be considered objectively, irrespective of
his disability. That positive approach must be shown by
seniors.”S.K.Rungta, Senior Advocate, Delhi High Court.

“I would like to ask any judge who is currently serving in India: if
you went blind while on the bench, and were able to efficiently
discharge your responsibility before this, how would you feel if told
that you can no longer continue as a judge, even if you are able to
perform your functions with some amount of retraining and ability to
use adaptive tech?” David Szumowski, San Diego County Superior Court
judge.

Despite being a skilled legal professional, imagine being told by
employers that they have no place for you because of your disability
or not having access to the same work and career growth opportunities
as your able-bodied counterparts. That, unfortunately, is the reality
that confronts scores of legal professionals with disabilities in
India and beyond. It is to have a constructive conversation on how
these structural realities can be effectively confronted that we plan
to have an International Summit on Legal Professionals with
Disabilities, to coincide with the international day on persons with
disabilities.

The 3-day Summit will serve as a platform to set in motion a thought
process for how the state of affairs can be effectively reversed.
Through a series of three panel discussions, we hope to foster a
well-considered dialogue on how we can break down the structural and
attitudinal barriers that prevent disabled legal professionals from
leading lives of equal productivity and dignity as their able-bodied
counterparts.

As part of the summit, we will launch a book featuring the interviews
of 21 legal professionals with disabilities from 6 countries. These
interviews were conducted between 2016 and 2018 as part of the IDIA
Disability Access Programme [IDAP]. We are partnering with the Oxford
Human Rights Hub and the Harvard Law School Project on Disability for
this summit.

We hope that the sustained dialogue fostered by this Summit will offer
us an intelligent way forward to help unleash the full potential of
legal professionals with disabilities, in India and beyond.


List of speakers can be found here:
https://sites.google.com/ilslaw.in/internationalsummit/themes-speakers
Details of book launch and conversation with Haben Girma can be found here:
https://sites.google.com/ilslaw.in/internationalsummit/side-events
You can register here:
https://sites.google.com/ilslaw.in/internationalsummit/registration

Best,
Rahul

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Rahul Bajaj
Candidate for the MPhil in Law
Rhodes Scholar (India and Linacre 2018)
University of Oxford