The second edition of Disability Law and Policy by Burton Blatt Institute President and University Professor Peter Blank was published to mark the 34th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). “Disability Law and Policy presents an overview of the themes and insights of disability law – a compelling overview of how our legal system has responded to the needs of people with disabilities.”
2025 marks the ADA’s 35th anniversary, which will be celebrated on July 26. Over the past 30 years, disability law and policy have evolved dramatically in the U.S. and internationally. “Walls of inaccessibility, exclusion, segregation, and discrimination have often been torn down, brick by brick. But the work of advocates who never knew a world without the ADA continues, and now builds on the work of those who came before,” says Blank, who is also a law professor.
Rex Frieden, an internationally renowned disability rights researcher and advocate and former president of the National Council on People with Disabilities, writes in his foreword to Blank’s book: “In 1967, I survived a head-on collision. I woke up paralyzed from the shoulders down…. My story is one of many in the modern disability rights movement. In Disability Law and Policy, Peter Blank retells my story and the personal experiences of so many other people living with disabilities in a master tour of the field. Peter is a world-renowned teacher, researcher, lawyer, and advocate. He has been a central figure in the great modern shift in civil rights for people with disabilities…. Disability Law and Policy should be read by all of us: those with lived experience of disability, their advocates, their parents, family, and friends.”
“Building on the efforts of Rex Frieden and so many others – family, friends, advocates and allies – a new generation of people with disabilities is moving forward,” said Blank. “With disability laws and policies as our guide, we offer hope for a future where all people, regardless of their individual differences, are welcomed as full and equal members of society.”
Disability Law and Policy is published by Foundation Press and is available from West Academic.