“Disability Rights Advocacy and Le
galism in South Korea and Japan”
Celeste Arrington\,
Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Political Science and
International Affairs\, George Washington University
Disability righ ts advocates in South Korea and Japan have accessed the courts to address a n array of disability rights issues\, from barriers to political participat ion and forced sterilization in Japan to the inaccessibility of inter-city buses and forced labor on salt farms in South Korea. In her talk\, Professo r Celeste Arrington will analyze the emergence of legalism in South Korea a nd Japan\, through comparisons of recent reforms related to disability disc rimination and accessibility.
This talk's focus will be the specific contributions to the trend towards legalism in Japan and Korea by disabilit y "cause" lawyers. This growing cohort of legal advocates have drafted and deliberated new legislation\, lobbied for policy changes\, enhanced the cap acity of disabled persons’ organizations\, investigated human rights condit ions\, established mechanisms for remedying rights violations\, monitored c ompliance with the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities\, and represented persons with disabilities in court. Not only have these efforts helped to advance the rights of persons with disab ilities\, they have also made an impact on South Korea's and Japan's legal systems more broadly.
As chronicled in Professor Arrington's forthcom ing book\, From Manners to Rules: Advocating for Legalism in South Kore a and Japan (Cambridge Studies in Law and Society)\, in addition to im portant disability rights gains\, disability rights advocates have made not able contributions to the emergence of more formal rules and participatory policymaking and enforcement\, including through the courts. These markers of emerging legal formalism represent a change since governance in both cou ntries was long known for relying on vague laws\, bureaucratic discretion\, and nonbinding exhortations. While existing studies of legalism and the br oader judicialization of politics tend to offer top-down or structural expl anations\, Professor Arrington's forthcoming book traces how activists and lawyers are contributing to the legalistic turn in regulatory style from th e bottom up by demanding more detailed and enforceable legal frameworks and using them in court.
Celeste Arrington is Korea Fou ndation Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. She is the Director of the GW Institute fo r Korea Studies and Co-Director of the East Asia National Resource Center ( 2024-present). She specializes in comparative public policy\, law and socia l change\, lawyers\, and governance\, with a regional focus on the Koreas a nd Japan. She is also interested in Northeast Asian security\, North Korean human rights\, and transnational activism. Her first book was Accident al Activists: Victim Movements and Governmental Accountability in Japan and South Korea (Cornell\, 2016). She has published numerous articles and she coedited Rights Claiming in South Korea with Patricia Goedde (Cambridge\, 2021). Her forthcoming book analyzes the legalistic turn in Ko rean and Japanese regulatory style through paired case studies related to t obacco control and disability rights. She received a PhD from UC Berkeley\, an MPhil from the University of Cambridge\, and an AB from Princeton Unive rsity. She has been a fellow at the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harv ard\, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton\, and the Ludwig Maximi lians University in Munich. GW’s Office of the Vice President for Research awarded her the 2021 Early Career Research Scholar Award. Her article with Claudia Kim\, “Knowledge Production Through Legal Mobilization: Environment al Activism Against the U.S. Military Bases in East Asia\,” won the 2023 As ian Law and Society Association’s distinguished article award.
A ligh t lunch will be provided.
Co-sponsored by East Asian Legal Studies\, the Harvard Law School Project on Disability\, the Korea Institute\, the Re ischauer Foundation\, and the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations.
CATEGORIES:Speaker/Panel LOCATION:Austin Hall\; 308 Morgan Meeting Room GEO:0;0 ORGANIZER;CN="Deborah Han":MAILTO:debhan@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/disability-rights-advocacy-and -legalism-in-south-korea-and-japan/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Celeste-Arrington-250204-Horizontal-06.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 DTSTART:20241103T060000 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR