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Disability, Rights, and the Construction of Sexuality in Tort Claims

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Sagit Mor  and
Rina B. Pikkel
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Abstract

This study empirically investigates how courts define sexuality of disabled persons in the absence of a formal right to sexuality. The focus of the study is tort law, a field ungoverned by direct disability rights legislation, assuming that tort law is the law of disablement as it concerns the transformative process of becoming disabled. The study investigates the types of damages courts have awarded for harm to sexual functioning, inquiring to whom and under what conditions have they been awarded. Additionally, it examines the discourse that characterizes each type of damages, and the legal, social, medical, and healthcare policy developments that have affected courts' rhetoric and reasoning. Our findings reveal shifting trends in scale, content, and inclusiveness of beneficiaries in terms of gender and age. Over time, courts have adopted a more hopeful and dynamic approach to disabled persons' sexuality while remaining within an individual-medical framework. We suggest that these shifting trends can be linked to the slow diffusion of the social-affirmative approach to disability, the limits of tort law as a field, and the role of healthcare policy in shaping the landscape of tort claims.

Type
Special Issue: Disability Legal Studies Articles
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 2019 , pp. 1016 - 1050
Copyright
© 2019 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

This research was supported by the Israeli Science Foundation (ISF), grant no. 719/16. We are grateful to Orna Rabinovich-Einy, Katharina Heyer, Avital Mentovich, Tamar Kricheli-Katz, Ariel Porat, Yair Sagy, Doron Dorfman, Roni Holler, and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions to previous versions of the text. We are particularly thankful to Susan Sterett, LSR Editor, for her close guidance and invaluable support.

Both authors contributed equally to this manuscript.

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