1.3: Inclusion Debates and Legal Frameworks
Section aim

The objective of the third section is to lay the groundwork for an examination of the legal frameworks around copyright in Part Two and inclusion in Part Three.

“What is law?”

(This is no single or easy answer to this one, but Wikipedia gives it a good go in defining the concept.)

 

Main branches of law

The following chat shows the main branches of the law – public law and private law – and how the various areas fit below those headings.

Focus areas

The main two areas of law that we are concerned with in this course are human rights law and copyright law.  Human rights law is a part of public international law – which concerns relations between states. Copyright law falls under the head of private law and draws on elements from property, tort and contract. 

Over the years some of our orators have produced memorable quotes about these areas of law.

“Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.”

– Plato

“To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.”

– Nelson Mandela

“Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population.”

– Albert Einstein

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.”

– Mark Twain

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.”

– Plato

We will return to both human rights law and copyright law in more depth in Part Two and Three.

Further reading

For a broad introduction to intellectual property law in general, the following articles are likely to be of interest:

For an introduction to Human Rights, the following articles will be of interest:

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The purpose of looking at this information at this stage is to get you thinking about the legal regimes of human rights and copyright and to set the scene for the next blocks of work.

Reflection

Once you have been through the sources of material, reflect on the following questions:

  • What is law?
  • Why do we have laws?
  • What is the overall purpose of intellectual property laws?
  • What is the function of human rights?
  • Where have you come across these laws in your working life – if at all? Where do you think that they might be relevant?

Cultural Understanding

There are many debates about how disability is understood culturally. The most commonly discussed distinction is between the medical model and the social model.

The medical model views disability as physical or medical, whereas the social model views disability as caused by the way that society is structured and how it thinks about difference.

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Different types of models of disability

[with thanks to Vip Artprandid]

As well as the medial and social models, there are other ways that disability is viewed. These models have arranged with reference to a disablement to enablement continuum in the table below.

Types of Disability Models
Characteristics Feature

Religious or Moral Model

  • Historically the oldest and is less prevalent today
  • Based on religious and cultural beliefs
  • Disability associated with guilt, sin and shame

Charity or Tragedy Model

  • Depicts disabled people as victims of circumstance, deserving of pity
  • Views disabled people as charitable cases
  • Patronizing effect on disabled people
  • Widens the gap between disabled people and society

Medical Model or Individual Model or Biological-Inferiority or Functional-Limitation Model

  • Results from an individual person’s physical or mental limitations
  • Management of the disability is aimed at a “cure”

Expert or Professional Model

  • Offshoot of the medical model
  • Authoritarian style i.e. over-active service provider and passive client

Rehabilitation Model

  • Similar to the medical model
  • Disability as a deficiency that must be fixed by a rehabilitation professional or other helping professionals

Economic Model

  • Defined by a person’s inability to participate in work
  • Used primarily by policy makers to assess the distribution of benefits

Social Model or Minority-Group Model

  • Consequence of environmental, social and attitudinal factors
  • Effect of disability movement initiated by disabled people

Rights-Based Model

  • Conceptualized as a socio-political construct within a rights-based discourse
  • Not driven by compassion, but by dignity and freedom

Empowering or Customer Model

  • Exact opposite of the expert model
  • Expert viewed as a service provider to the disabled client

Affirmative (Swain and French, 2000)

  • Non-tragic view of disability and impairment which encompasses positive social identities, both individual and collective … grounded in the benefits of life style and life experience of being impaired and disabled (569)

Final thought

Now think of examples that you have encountered either in your own experience or in the media where each of these perspectives is evident.