Disability rights, social rights, and freedom

Abstract

In this essay, I seek to problematize the notion of rights as they have often been applied to persons with disabilities, and particularly in the framework of “social rights.” Although social rights have been important in articulating demands by and for disabled persons, they also have fallen prey to a problem with “rights discourse” more generally, which is that they are thought of in terms of justice rather than freedom. Such a framing has led to inadequate implementation of the concept of rights to disabled persons and has unforeseen consequences, including the ways in which the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability rights have been conceived along terms of US “welfare reform” rather than those of civil rights.