Disability Justice in Practice: Instituting a New Public Culture of Obligations

Abstract

This chapter considers how the African legal philosophy of disability justice can be translated into practice in contributing to the improvement of the community experience for people with disabilities. It does so by providing the outlines of a new public moral culture of stringent ethical and moral horizontal obligations owed to people with disabilities by people without disabilities. It argues that a new public moral culture of obligations is contingent on a moral and political educational agenda capable of nurturing special obligations owed to people with disabilities and other vulnerable citizens. An essential part of this reform agenda is predicated on moral and political citizenship education supported by a hypothecated tax scheme, both of which would provide a vehicle to concretise the kind of ethical and moral obligations foundational to African legal philosophy. It is argued that this would underscore the obligations incumbent on people without disabilities to treat others with compassion, especially people with disabilities, as a basic requirement of morality and justice that binds members of any political community.