March 20: Stein to Discuss U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
William & Mary Law Professor Michael Stein will present the Law School's annual Blackstone Lecture on Thursday, March 20, at 3:30 p.m. in the Law School's McGlothlin Courtroom. The lecture is titled "The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: The First Human Rights Treaty of the Twenty-First Century." Admission is free and all are welcome.
The United Nations adopted the Convention by general consensus on Dec. 13, 2006. Stein, an internationally recognized disability rights expert who participated in the negotiations, will describe the process behind the treaty development and its impact for the 650 million disabled persons worldwide.
Stein has been a member of the Law School faculty since 2000, and actively consults with international governments on their disability laws and policies. He serves on several disability rights advisory boards and blue ribbon disability research panels, and also acts as a legal advisor to several non-governmental organizations, including the Special Olympics and Disabled Peoples' International. He is currently an American Bar Association Commissioner on Mental and Physical Disability Law.
He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Before entering academia, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. (while on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals), and practiced law with Sullivan & Cromwell in New York. During that time, he served as president of the National Disabled Bar Association, and pro bono counsel for the U.S. Justice Department's Environmental Division and the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Rights Division.
Stein's scholarship has been published in leading law journals and he has been the recipient of an American Council of Learned Societies Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship, a Mark DeWolfe Howe Fund Grant, a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, and a National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research Merit Fellowship. He has been a fellow at Harvard Law School in both the East Asian Legal Studies and Human Rights programs.
The Blackstone Lecture Series was established in 1996 to recognize the scholarly achievements of younger members of the Law School faculty. The series is made possible by the generosity of Law School alumni.
For more about the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, visit the United Nations' website.