Legal Responses to Different Treatment of Persons With Disabilities Review of Martha Minow's Making All the Difference

People with disabilities long have been considered different, disfavored, and devalued. Le gal constructs have deprived them of personal choices, denied them partic ipation in social arrangements, and excluded them from community liv ing. For centuries, the gradual evolu tion of legally enforced difference was pursued as a benevolent response to undeniable physical characteristics and less understood mental condi tions. Only recently has this formali zation of difference been challenged as an exaggerated and inappropriate reaction to the basic human condi tion of sameness. The conceptual foundation for this challenge was rights. Disability law yers adopted models of equality and integration from the civil rights movement and due process from the Supreme Court's criminal justice ju risprudence. The emphasis on rights properly focused the reform effort on the relationship between government and a selected portion of its dispos sessed citizenry. It also reflected a faith in judicial decisionmaking rath er than majoritarian politics or com munity organizing. It ultimately re sulted in what frequently was labeled as a "rights revolution," although the full force of this social change was often little more than a modest claim to equality. If the primacy of rights became the theme, then the demand for special assistance soon joined as the accom paniment. The argument for legal sameness also had to contend with