Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T20:20:35.683Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The Disabling Power of Law and Market

from Part II - New Machineries of Injustice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2020

Nate Holdren
Affiliation:
Drake University, Iowa
Get access

Summary

Chapter 4 begins the book’s second half, focusing on the aftermath of compensation laws. The chapter investigates lawsuits brought by men who were employed while physically disabled and who then suffered further disabling injury. The chapter uses disability as a category of analysis to show that disability is a social and historical power relationship that changes over time. These men did not fit into the categories of compensation laws because those laws introduced a new assumption into the law that so-called normal employees were non-disabled. This assumption was out of step with the social realities of widespread injury and the employment of people with disabilities. The mismatch between law and social reality meant that these men ended up in court over their compensation claims. The chapter uses these men’s legal cases to show how the law practiced a variety of forms of discrimination against disabled people and ultimately created new legal and economic meanings of disability. In the end, courts made disabled men more legally equal to the able-bodied by valuing their injuries equally. The courts who did so believed that raising the value of disabled men’s injuries would create new employment discrimination against the disabled.

Keywords

Type
Chapter
Information
Injury Impoverished
Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era
, pp. 137 - 174
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×