In the past, laws about people with disabilities were cruel. For example, parents — on the behalf of their children — used to be able to sue hospitals for failing to prevent births of their children who were born with disabilities.

As a researcher and advocate for disability rights, Sagit Mor is interested in these lawsuits and how the climate in Israel and around the world has changed when it comes to disability rights.

Mor, a visiting professor at the University of Washington for the 2015-16 academic year and senior lecturer at University of Haifa Faculty of Law in Israel, spoke at Syracuse University on Tuesday afternoon as part of the Disability Law and Policy Program’s spring lecture series.

The general theme of Mor’s lecture was that disability is not a defining character trait, but that society views people with disabilities differently than people who do not have disabilities.

Mor advocates for much more research to be done in disability legal studies so that the views toward people with disabilities can change in the court system, change in society and bring about a general change in how those who have disabilities are treated.

This is not the first time that Mor has come to SU. She spoke at the university 10 years ago when the College of Law’s Disability Law and Policy Program was first formed. She came back, she said, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 50th anniversary of the publishing of Jacobus tenBroek’s “The Right to Live in the World: The Disabled in the Law of Torts,” a book that advocates for disability rights.

On Tuesday, Mor said disabilities have a major impact on public law, such as tort law, which encompasses the laws of injuries and accidents. Tort laws assign responsibility for civil wrongs, and the aim of torts is to provide relief to sufferers and to deter other people from creating similar situations in which injuries and accidents may occur, Mor said.

Current tort laws in regard to people with disabilities can only do so much, she said, adding that there is a need to re-conceptualize the compensations given to people with disabilities who suffer injuries or are part of accidents.

And in order to get compensation, Mor said, people with disabilities have to prove that they are miserable and that they couldn’t live without the compensation.

“Lawyers have a role to either show the misery or prove no misery,” she said.

Mor also acknowledged that there is a social injustice with trials because poor people are often less likely to go to trial since they do not have the resources to pursue a trial.

Disability also impacts veterans, she said, especially in Israel. She said in her research, she’s observed that veterans with disabilities still work in addition to receiving benefits.

Mor added that there are not enough studies done on people with disabilities and tort law.

Mor also spoke about her work researching legal actions brought by parents who have children with disabilities — wrongful birth and wrongful life claims.

Wrongful birth claims are lawsuits brought by parents that claim health service providers failed to notify them of their child’s potential disability before birth.

Wrongful life claims are slightly different. They involve a child suing — or parents suing on behalf of their child — a health service provider or another party for failing to prevent the child’s own birth.

Mor said both types of lawsuits were outlawed in Israel in 2012.

The reasons that parents pursue these claims range from not wanting to forgo the costs of raising a child with disabilities and the idea of “not having a perfect child,” Mor said.

Published on April 13, 2016 at 12:14 am

Contact Connor: clried@syr.edu