Harvard Law School Project on Disability

The Harvard Law School Association presented its highest award this past spring to William P. Alford ’77 and Charles J. Ogletree ’78 —two of Harvard Law School's most distinguished professors, mentors to generations of jurists, advisers to senators, presidents and world leaders, and celebrated doers of good works—and longtime friends.

A special reception was held at the White House on July 20 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. On hand to introduce President Barack Obama ’91 and Vice President Joe Biden was Harvard Law School graduate Haben Girma ’13, who is currently a Skadden Fellow at Disability Rights Advocates in Berkeley, Calif. Girma was the first deafblind student to graduate from HLS.

Michael A. Stein '88, co-founder and executive director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, received the American Bar Association’s Paul G. Hearne Award for Disability Rights in August.

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Michael Stein '88, an internationally recognized expert on disability rights, received the inaugural Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion from the Ruderman Family Foundation. The award recognizes an individual who has made an extraordinary contribution to the inclusion of people with disabilities in the Jewish world and the greater public.

Some recent faculty and clinical highlights—from research on anti-corruption efforts to conferences on financial regulation.

In November, the Harvard Law School Project on Disability hosted the fall meeting of the Special Olympics International (SOI) Board of Directors, under the direction of board member and Harvard Law School Professor William Alford, who has worked for more than two decades with SOI.

As a deaf-blind student with very limited sight and hearing, Haben Girma '13 learned that you must be a self-advocate and come up with creative solutions to the problems you face. If that fails, she says, then the law can be a strong ally.

As an enthusiastic supporter of the Special Olympics who has worked for more than two decades with Special Olympics International, Harvard Law School Professor William P. Alford welcomed the opportunity to help bring about the 2013 Special Olympics World Winter Games, held in PyeongChang, Korea earlier this year. “One of the major messages of the Special Olympics is that having a disability need not be seen as being as limiting or disqualifying as some people might assume,” says Alford, director of East Asian Legal Studies and chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability (HPOD).

Harvard Law School Visiting Professor Michael Ashley Stein ’88 was awarded the 2013 Viscardi Award, which honors people living with disabilities for their work and influence in the global disability community.

In October, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg issued two rulings bolstering the rights of persons with psycho-social disabilities. Both cases were brought by Hungarian-Slovakian disability rights activist János Fiala-Butora LL.M. ’10, an S.J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School and an associate of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, known as HPOD.

Michael Stein ‘88, Harvard Law School visiting professor and executive director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, was one of a dozen people featured in the July 15, 2012, Boston Globe Magazine article, “12 Bostonians Changing the World.”

HLS Professor William Alford ’77, a member of the executive committee of the board of directors of Special Olympics International and chair of its research and policy committee, met with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in November to discuss disability issues. Alford was a participant in the meeting at the invitation of Timothy Shriver, chairman of Special Olympics, and Na Kyung-won, a member of the South Korean Congress who has been at the forefront of disability rights legislation.

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A few weeks before he received his LL.M. from Harvard Law last year, János Fiala was handed a victory by the European Court of Human Rights.

In an April 18 op-ed published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Harvard Law School Professor William Alford ’77 addresses how budget cutting in Congress threatens to undermine the Special Olympics—an organization whose history, according to Alford, “is one of how civil society and government working together can create results that neither could wholly attain on its own.”

On May 20, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that blanket disenfranchisement of people with disabilities is contrary to the European Convention of Human Rights.

Samuel Bagenstos ’93, deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, U.S. Department of Justice, spoke last week at HLS on the Obama administration’s focus on enforcing disability rights at home and supporting them abroad.

On Friday July 24, President Barack Obama ’91 announced that the United States will sign the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, joining more than 100 other nations. The Harvard Law School Project on Disability played a prominent role in the negotiations leading up to the convention, which is the first global human rights treaty of the 21st century.