Dean Hannah Arterian recently announced that Professor Arlene Kanter was named the Bond, Schoeneck & King Distinguished Professor at Syracuse University College of Law for 2012-14. Kanter teaches courses on U.S., comparative and international disability law and policy; education and special education law; as well as legislation and policy, ethics and professionalism.
“I am proud to receive this award and to share the honor with its previous recipients,” Kanter says. “To me, this award acknowledges not only my work in the area of disability rights law, but also the coming of age of the disability law field which, when I entered law school, did not even exist, but which today is a thriving, dynamic and intellectually exciting field of law.”
Kanter founded and directs the Disability Law and Policy Program, which houses the nation’s first joint degree program in law and disability studies. She also co-directs the SU Center on Human Policy, Law, and Disability Studies, which is the nation’s first multi-disciplinary center dedicated to research, advocacy, academic programming, and public education on issues of inclusion and equality for people with disabilities.
In addition, Kanter publishes and lectures extensively on U.S., comparative, and international disability law. She is the co-author of the first law casebook on international and comparative disability law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on disability law. Her most recent article, “There’s No Place Like Home: The Right of People with Disabilities to Live in the Community Under International and Domestic Law,” was published as the lead article in the Israel Law Review, a journal of Cambridge University Press. Her upcoming book, “Disability and Human Rights: The Development and Potential of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities,” will be published next year by Routledge Press. Her new co-edited book, “Righting Educational Wrongs: The Intersection of Law, Education and Disability Studies,” will be published this year in the Critical Perspectives Series of SU Press.
Kanter founded and edits the SSRN Disability Law Journal and co-founded the AALS Section on Disability Law. In 2001-06, she worked with the United Nations on drafting the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and, since then, she has worked with several countries on implementing the convention. In 2010-11, she was named the Distinguished Switzer Fellow by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Disability Rehabilitation Research Institute. In 2009-10, she was a Fulbright Scholar at Tel Aviv University in Israel. In 2005, she received SU’s most prestigious teaching award, the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Award for Excellence in Teaching. She also holds a courtesy appointment in the School of Education. At the College of Law, Kanter has served as associate dean for academic affairs and as the director of clinical legal education.
College of Law Professor Margaret Harding held the BS&K Professorship from 2010-12.
